Pessimistic Inspiration

Focus

2011-06-30T15:42:00.001-05:00

Okay, three posts in one month. Not exactly the stellar rebirth I was hoping for. Free time is precious these days, especially in the summer time. I like to spend at least a few hours with the family and girls when I get home from work, and that time tends to be outside or doing something fun. After that, I like to end my evenings with World of Warcraft. Not much time in between for worthwhile blog posts.

I realized that the year is already half over, and I feel like I haven't "accomplished" anything. I can hardly even count work accomplishments, despite the fact that my big "project" did get released with much praise. There were a slew of issues that I'm still trying to clean up 3 months later. The whole experience left a sour taste in my mouth.

Health/running wise, obviously last year I had my marathon which, yes was an awesome accomplishment. It was something I worked very hard all year for, and in the end, achieved a goal I set for myself. But this year? I got nothing. I've been struggling with what I eat, and running just the bare minimum to get by. I need something new. I need a new focus.

Slow Start

2011-06-17T14:57:00.001-05:00

I'm reminded quickly that writing blog posts takes real time. And I'm still not quite sure how I want to approach this. Light hearted sugar coated posts about my day to day life kind of bore me. I simply don't like writing about what I do on an average day, because 95% of the time it's the same thing. That brings me back to what I used to post about: goals, purpose, motivations, and my general musings on what makes me tick. I suppose I should start there.

This year is already half over and I feel like I've spent the whole time unfocused and underperforming. Even my big work project, which technically I "achieved" this year, was marred by a slew of negative factors. And my brain has a hard time remembering anything positive, all I focus on is the negative.

In my health, I can't come up with any goals. For so long now I've been focused on either losing weight or some new running goal. That all peaked last year with my marathon goal and this year has just been "run because I have to". This makes me just do the bare minimum really, and as a direct result I'm up 15 pounds and feeling "lazy" all the time. Yeah, I run, but it definitely does not feel the same as training.

At home I've been struggling with finding patience with my kids, Megan specifically. I'm sure she doesn't do it on purpose, but she is so good at pushing my buttons. She knows what sets me off and does exactly that. I don't know if it's just her personality or if I'm failing to give her enough attention or what. I'm not wanting a perfectly compliant kid, but it would be nice to get past this feeling that she is going to defy me 99% of the time.

Whew, I'm starting to remember why I liked blogging. It forces me to think about all the specific things in my life that I want to change and sometimes just by getting the specifics figured out I can make the changes I want to make. I can't solve a problem and I can't fix something that is bothering me if I don't have it clearly identified.

Change

2011-06-11T19:14:00.004-05:00

Exactly 6 years ago today, I started blogging. It was even a Saturday, just like today. I started my blog for a variety of reasons, but over time, things changed. My audience changed, I was aware of who was reading my blog. I started censoring my posts in ways that ultimately irked me. I wasn't blogging for me anymore, which is the main reason I started in the first place.

So I stopped. I took a few months off. But I am in need of a change. So I thought on the anniversary of my first blog, why not start up again? Get back to the basics and focus on the important stuff, like change.

Change is hardest for me when I have no reason to change. When life is chugging right along and everything is in order. Having kids was the biggest reason I ever had to bring about change, which ended up being a catalyst for so much more. But now that boat has sailed, I find change coming harder.

The things I want to change are subtle. Like trying to not get angry with Megan so much when she does crazy things like pour a bottle of olive oil all over the counter. Or subtle changes to my eating and exercise habits. They are changes that from an outside perspective, no one would even know about. But at the same time, they are changes that are important to me and that I need and want to make.

So on the eve of my 35 birthday, I'm making a few long term commitments to my self. A series of changes that only I know about, but that I want to make. I'm calling it my 5-year plan. My hopes are that it gets me where I want to be when I hit what I assume will be a next big mile stone, the dreaded FOUR-OH. That mid life crisis is looming out there, I just know it.

To go along with these changes, my blog has changed as well. The new title hopefully reflecting that change, along with the "back to the basics" layout. Time to focus on the important stuff.

Rebirth

2011-06-02T07:48:00.002-05:00

Dead Blog

2010-11-15T19:11:00.006-06:00

I haven't given up on my blog or anything, but the motivation is definitely lacking these days. There isn't much new going on and I'm not going to spend all my time blogging about work. I already think about work too much, I don't need to be doing it on my free time at home either.

On some positive notes, Casey is growing up fast. She has hit many milestones that I've neglected to talk much about. In short, she is becoming quite a handful. Getting into things, climbing things, and generally doing all sorts of cool stuff on her own. Most nights I get to come home to her running to me screaming "Daddy!", as we proceed to have a fun laid back evening. There are still challenging moments between her and Megan, but for the most part they have a lot of fun playing together. In short bursts at least.

Megan in the meantime is learning new stuff every day and having a great time at her preschool that she started this fall. She can count to 6 in Spanish! Last weekend she got to bring home one of the school pets for the weekend, Rosey the guinea pig. Everyone had fun taking care of her and holding or petting her.

The first snow this weekend was a bit of a shock, but the realization that I'm done running outside for the year is finally starting to sink in. It didn't help that just last week I was running outside all week in 50-60 degree weather. It sort of made me forget that it's actually the middle of November. After spinning out and doing a complete 360 on the road this weekend driving to the gym, I was quickly reminded that it is in fact, winter.

Reality Check

2010-11-08T17:55:00.002-06:00

Getting through the candy haze of Halloween made me stop and realize something. I've completely lost track of what I eat on a daily basis, and have damn near zero self control anymore. It's a harsh reality to face, but it's important. I topped the scale this morning at a whopping 192.5, which is easily 10 lbs over where I like to be. With Thanksgiving right around the corner and Christmas after that, it isn't going to get any easier.

Instead of trying to put it off until the New Year, I'm going to nip this in the bud right now. The easiest thing for me is to simply flip the switch back to "off", as in "off-limits". No more excuses like "Well, I'm running 25 miles this weekend..." because, quite frankly, I'm not! I used the marathon training as an excuse to fall off the food wagon. Time to get back on.

With any big swing like this, there has to be a little give and take. Just saying a ton of stuff is off limits won't work, because if I don't reward myself in some other way, it will back fire. So I'm going to put diet pop back on the menu and enjoy my one unhealthy indulgence. To counter that, I'm going to take coffee off the menu, which although not high in calories, was a "gateway" drink for me. Because I can't drink coffee black, I have to put the equivalent of 6 teaspoons of sugar in it via artificial sweetener. This in turn makes me crave sweets throughout the day. And of course, the remainder of the off-limits list includes the basic "no wasted calories" crap, which is everything from candy, to snacks, to free food at work, etc.

The first week will be hard, but if I can get into the swing of some new habits before Thanksgiving hits, I'll be in good shape to limit my food intake over the holidays. Once I've got that all under control, I can shift my focus to my eventual goals of weight training. I've been sent a few ideas in email and been doing a little research on my own. I think I'll have a good plan come New Years.

Halloween... check

2010-11-02T18:32:00.003-05:00

Halloween this year went well. Megan went as Iron Man and Casey was a cute little Monkey. Sadly I didn't really get many pictures this year, although I'm sure I can dig up a few from various times this month. I think there must have been about five different Halloween events we did this year, some more successful than others.

This years I actually stayed in, and let Andrea take the kids around the neighborhood. Despite doing all the years prior to this year, I feel like I am still ahead because this was the first year of having to take both kids out. Andrea did fine and the kids collected tons of candy.

On the health front, I still haven't started any new habits. It's in the back of my mind, but that's the problem. My brain is so busy thinking about work all the time, I can't find the motivation to put in extra effort figuring out a good new exercise routine. However just thinking about it out loud at least motivated me to spend a few minutes on google. Hmmm... maybe I can come up with something to start in the next month or two.

Still letting my evenings be mostly taken up by World of Warcraft. Being the good crack dealer that I am, I've got two different people at work to restart their accounts as well. Time will tell how long we all keep it going this time. Usually for me it just amounts to how long I can have fun doing semi-new stuff mixed with the same thing over and over. Eventually though, the semi-new stuff starts to wear off and the only thing left is the basic Skinner Box. The new expansion coming in Dec will extend the semi-new stuff for quite awhile.

Work is progressing as best as it can at this point. I'm very afraid that in December I'll be working weekends and evening simply because I am so invested in this project. My desire to see it succeed is officially higher then any thing I've ever done at any job. This is probably a bad thing, because any time I've ever invested personally in a work related thing, it's come back to bite me in the ass.

The Two Dreaded W's

2010-10-23T18:27:00.003-05:00

Okay, so it's been a long time since my last post. At least I didn't wait a full two weeks! My lack of posting has come because of two W's: Work and World of Warcraft. Maybe that is three W's.

If you're a frequent visitor to my blog, you should recall that I've been mentioning off and on about my "big ideas" at work. Although I came up with the ideas well over one and half years ago, it wasn't until this summer that things really got off the ground. It started in May with the first opportunity to share my ideas to the right audience, which lead to a series of further meetings up the chain until I finally reached high enough to the decision maker level. Next thing I know, my ideas are picked to go full steam ahead as the next big project, and I'm given the opportunity to lead the project. Pretty exciting stuff. The flip side is that, it basically means I am always thinking about work. All the time. I mean, all the time. I've gone running more than a half dozen times since the marathon and every single one has been consumed with thoughts about work.

Mostly I'm working out technical problems in my head. Redesigning a major portion of 10 year old software isn't exactly straight forward. To add to all this, is the timeline. What I would have wanted 4-6 months to complete, I'm being asked to do in 3. Stress? Maybe. Okay, yeah. Just a little. On the plus side, I got to more or less pick the team by hand, and they are all very excited about doing something totally new and working with the latest technologies. It should be a rather fun (albeit stressful) couple of months.

Sometime around the beginning of Sept I started up a new WoW account. In part because the marathon training was coming to an end and also because I was winding down some other games I had bought. I honestly tried to squeeze as much gaming out of the single player games I had. In the end, the coming back to WoW ended up being a lot of fun and there is a new expansion coming out in a month. This has got to be like the 4th or 5th time I've come back to WoW after a year long break. We'll see how long I last this time.

Moving On

2010-10-12T20:24:00.004-05:00

As much as I'd love to leave my marathon post up forever, it's time to put that event behind me, tucked away in a small list of things I'm truly proud about. Life keeps moving forward no matter how much you want to revel in today.

Good or bad, every experience can be positive as long as you learn from it. What did I learn from my marathon experience? I learned that with proper preparation, good planning, and hard work you can accomplish something you otherwise might not have. And as always, a little good luck doesn't hurt (good weather).

So what's next for Shawn? There are two things on my mind lately. First is my family, and specifically Megan. She's 5 years old now! I can't even begin to explain how weird that feels just saying it. Her birthday was last weekend, and it was a blast. Big thanks to my Mom for putting together such an awesome Spiderman theme birthday at the last minute. But Megan's having a tough go of things right now, particularly at night after I get home. We fight a lot, mainly about outside time and her running off or going into neighbors houses without telling us. It's been very frustrating and we've had a few big fights that I feel absolutely horrible about.

So despite any personal goals I might have for the next few months or how much my job is going to get in the way (next post will be about that). I think I've decided what's next for Shawn. It's going to be all about Family, starting with date night this weekend for me and Andrea and building on more Daddy and Megan time, better communication, and helping teach limits. Nothing too hard right? Basic parenting stuff? But parenting is like anything else. You need proper preperation, good planning, and hard work. Time to put those lessons learned to good use.

18 weeks - 38 seconds

2010-10-04T18:12:00.009-05:00

Two apparently completely unrelated times. But for me, they are tied directly together. 18 weeks of training. Week in and week out. Not a single day skipped, not a single mile left out. I did all sorts of running I've never done before, speed training, distance training, heart rate training. The end result? Reaching and exceeding my goal by 38 seconds.

Official chip time: 3:29:22

When I started the race, I told my buddy who was about to finish his 6th marathon, that I honestly couldn't say how important reaching my goal was to me. This was my first marathon, I had no clue how I would feel at the end. Turns out, reaching that goal was a huge thing for me. I feel so lucky to have everything come together so perfectly. I can honestly say that if it wasn't for the near perfect weather, I probably would have fallen short.

The first part of the race was exactly what I expected and hoped for. Around mile 8 I sunk into my groove, running 14 straight miles with a pace variation of only 7 seconds (7:45-7:52)!! My family all saw me during this time, speeding along at my strongest between miles 14-16. Exactly at Mile 18, I had a minor scare, as my left plantars (good foot) had a huge twinge. Luckily, I had experienced this during training, so I knew it wouldn't be something to worry about, but I did have to adjust my stride for a little bit as the kink worked itself out.

Mile 22 is where the real fun began. This is where you make a final large uphill climb to Summit Ave. I made the climb in a solid 8:20 pace, which was great. I started down Summit easing back into my 8:00 goal pace, finishing mile 23 at 7:58. I was tired for sure, but at no point during this did I feel any type of "wall". However, somewhere between mile 23 and 24 is when the "weird" stuff started happening.

Weird is the best word I have to describe it, because it wasn't painful and it didn't seem to slow me down. First, my legs muscles felt really loose. The sensation scared the crap out of me initially, because I didn't know what it was, and I had never felt anything like it during training. Were my legs going to give out? Could I finish the last few miles? Next, they tightened up, so I figured they were cramping. This scared me even more. Cramping up legs could be the end of my running and I'd have to hobble across the finish line. I pushed it all out of my head and focused on keeping my form, landing softly, and I slightly slowed my pace back around 8:10. If this was my "wall", I wasn't going to let it stop me now.

The stuff going on with my legs combined with the final small uphill on mile 25 hit me hard, and I slowed to an 8:30 pace. After rounding the corner and seeing he final stretch, everything melted away. I honestly don't know if it was the downhill motion that fixed my legs or the pure mental side of knowing the finish line was just around the corner. But once I started that decent, my legs were feeling normal again. I sped up again, letting gravity do most of the work. As I entered the last few hundred yards, to my left my family was there, and Megan was cheering me on. It was the best feeling ever. I checked my watch: 11:29am. Holy shit, it was going to be close. I pushed harder. I could see the clock but I didn't have glasses on so I couldn't see the time. Did it say 3:29? Did it say 3:30? I got within 10 feet and saw the clock read 3:29:50. I had done it! I yelled out a victorious "YES!" and charged across the finish line. If you watch the video of me crossing the finish line, you can just make out the little yelp.

What's Next?

2010-10-02T17:40:00.004-05:00

Obviously my thoughts this week have been focused on the Marathon tomorrow. But even with that, in the back of my mind is that nagging thought that won't go away. What's next? What goals will I set for myself next on the fitness front? I still don't know exactly what the plan is.

Originally I had this grand scheme of finishing the marathon and then finding a personal trainer to help me learn weight training and just go with that as a 2 year goal. But financially right now it doesn't make sense to be spending money on something like that. I still want to get into lifting, but I'm not sure the best way. Maybe a few hours of Internet research is in order.

Anyway - Marathon - focus Shawn - no distractions. I'm ready for this, and I'm ready to hit my goal. Years of healthy living, discovering running, tons of races and training, all leading up to this. Will I be a one-and-done person? Never to run another Marathon in my life? Not sure... but for now, just need to focus on tomorrow. And then focus on one mile at a time, one step at a time.

Feel free to track me online - yet another way to watch my progress tomorrow. Click the picture/link below and it will take you directly to a map of my progress.

Not that I think anyone reading this is going to come cheer me on, but if you do, here are some spots I expect to be, at various times:

9:04 AM - W. Minnehaha Pkwy and W. 50th Street
9:36 AM - Cedar Ave, south end of Lake Nokomis bridge - Lake Nokomis
10:00 AM - E. Minnehaha Pkwy and Minnehaha Ave
10:56 AM - Summit Ave and S. Cleveland Ave - HOME STRETCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
11:28 AM - Summit Ave and Cathedral of St. Paul - FINISH DOWN HILL!!!!!

Thrill Seeker

2010-09-27T19:20:00.010-05:00

I like that I have an adventurous daughter. I like that Megan and I have been on roller coasters together. Megan doesn't seem to have much fear when it comes to trying new things, and long term, that's a positive quality to have in my opinion. In my experience, it's always my fear of something that prevents me from doing something cool.

What I don't like is how that fearlessness translates into a 5-year old. It means she has no fear going down the street, to walk head long into other families going-ons. It means she wants to explore and meet and play with all the kids on her block (of which there are quite a few now in her age range). But mostly it means going places without telling Mom and Dad, thus we get scared because we don't know where she is. So until we get that figured out, it's back to the drawing board. No more alone time outside until we get those limits and restrictions being followed consistently.

However, on the positive side, having an adventurous daughter translated into an AWESOME fun time at the Renaissance Festival! The last time we went was back in 2008, so Megan would have just been turning 3. I think it was a much bigger experience for her this year, and hopefully the start of a longer tradition.

Oddly enough, the little fairy girl at the entrance handing out magic stones was there again this year. We made our rounds, stopped at a few shows, but the big draw for Megan this year were all the crazy activities and rides. Megan wanted to try it all!

We came across a reptile display, and a huge boa was out. Everyone was crowded around, and the gal asked if anyone had any questions. Megan was quick to ask if snakes were mean.

After the snakes, I saw a climbing tower. I thought we'd give it a shot, and Megan got super excited. Next thing I know she's climbing up this thing like a crazy monkey. She could have kept going higher, but then looked back to realize how high she had gotten and wanted to come down.

She also had an awesome time on a human powered horse swing and jumped on the back of a guy who said he was a bench. Megan laughed and told him he wasn't a bench, but he insisted (don't worry, I made sure she tipped well).

But the kicker was the bungee cord trampoline. I was honestly worried about it, but Megan had a killer time. In fact, she had so much fun she insisted I let her do it one more time. She went even higher the second time. Check out this video:

I think we will be going again next year.

The Big One

2010-09-24T20:50:00.005-05:00

I've been hinting about it for a few weeks now. Mentioning my summer training, a different "style" of training, and my first attempts at interval training and speedwork (strideouts). So what is the big mystery? Can you guess?

Yes, I decided to train for and run my first marathon this year. The Twin Cities Marathon to be exact. Why did I keep it a big secret? I honestly don't know. I didn't even tell Andrea until a week before I started the training, despite the fact that I had signed up months earlier. I suppose it was because I hadn't fully decided why I was running a marathon yet. Was it just to see if I could do it? Was it for some bigger reason? I wasn't sure.

In the end, I've come to terms with why I'm doing it. And that will remain my special secret, and my special source of motivation while I'm out there. I've trained really hard this summer to not just finish a marathon, but RUN a marathon. I would consider my goal aggressive for a first time marathon. I also am confident that as long as there are not huge factors against me, I can achieve it.

Huge factors include: weather & injury. Weather is out of my control, but injury isn't. And tonight, after a 5 mile strideout session, I've developed one heck of a shin splint. I'm trying to remain calm. I've healed quickly in the past. Tomorrow is a rest day. Should I skip my last long run Sunday? Maybe... I'll see how it feels then. My buddy says it's a pre-marathon phantom pain. But it sure does hurt for being a "phantom".

The race is in 9 days, on October 3rd. For those not familiar with the TC Marathon, it starts in downtown Minneapolis, runs around the lakes where so many other races are done, towards Lake Nokomis, up along the Mississippi, and then straight over into St. Paul, ending at the Capital. Here is an interactive map link. The marathon starts at 8am, so feel free to come on down and cheer for me. I'll post more info closer to that weekend, including where I should be at various times. You can also follow my progress with automatic text updates. Just register here, using my name or bib number.

Text updates on Shawn's marathon progress! Bib number 858.

Great Race - 16th Place!

2010-09-19T21:27:00.004-05:00

On Saturday, I had yet another race, coming off my 25k from last weekend. This time it was a 10k around Lake Nokomis, which is the best flat 10k around. It was also the location of my previous personal best 10k. I set out on Saturday to set a new PR, mostly just as a final confidence builder leading into the big race.

It was probably the smallest race event I've ever done, with only 139 registered finishers. I talked shop with a few people under a tree as we avoided some early morning light rain. The talk turned to how there were a lot of "fast runners" on this course last year, in the 5-6 minute/mile range. Another girl chimed in how a friend of hers just ran his first half marathon in 1:15. Ummm sure. That's the time of an elite top runner athlete. No first timer, I don't care how fit they are, is gonna run that.

Anyway, I went along with the banter, thinking mostly about my goal. The time to beat? 42:27. The pace to beat? 6:50 minute/mile. I lined up at the start, only a few people back. I started fast with the pack, and quickly slowed to establish my pace. It was almost like the order of how people were going to finish were set within that first mile.

During the run, I only passed 2 people and I was never passed. After mile 3, I was completely alone. I mean, COMPLETELY. The person that finished ahead of me was a full minute ahead of me, and the person behind me was a full minute behind. This was a very weird feeling. With no one to pace or help motivate me to push harder, all I had was myself.

By the end of the race, I was pretty sure I had been able to beat my time. I was only watching my pace and never the total elapsed time so I couldn't be sure. I finished 16th overall, total time of 41:52, pace of 6:46. Finishing in the top 20 of a 10k like that was pretty damn cool. It was exactly the confidence builder I was looking for, and told me that all the training this summer really has had an impact on my running.

No Pics For You!

2010-09-14T22:52:00.006-05:00

Too many pretty pictures and videos lately, time to get back to the brass tacks of blogging. Last weekend was good, with both ups and downs. Every weekend in Sept is packed, as we try to squeeze as much fun as we can out of the final days of nice weather.

Saturday we did a Who Done It Hike, at a nice wooded park area near our house. It was one of those good in theory, bad in practice events. Don't get me wrong, the free bagels and Cliff bars were great, but the actual hike itself ended up being a bit of a chore. The "mystery" was geared more towards the older crowd (6th grade+). It just involved a ton of paper hand outs to read. I guess I was hoping for some live action stuff, with a few actors or something. We got a baby backpack for Casey and she promptly fell asleep 10 minutes in, but the hike was tough for Megan. She just wants to do her own thing and explore at her own pace. It's hard for me sometimes to shut off my stupid goal oriented brain. At one point Megan got tired, and so with 25 lbs. of Casey strapped to my back, I carried the 50 lbs. of Megan for probably a good quarter mile. That was a bit tough.

We came home and rested and then hit up a local car shop doing a customer appreciation day. We mainly just go because they have bouncers and sometimes free pony rides. This year no ponies, and it was so windy out that we cut it short. I did a short run after that.

Sunday was a 25k race for me. I had no plans on doing a speed race, as I'm all about pace now. I got down early because my schedule called for 20 miles, and 25k is 15.5 miles. While doing my pre-race run, I bumped into someone I knew, and before I realized it, we ended up doing a full second loop around the lake, which I didn't mean to do. Ended up doing 22 miles for the day after all was said and done. But more importantly, my pacing was excellent and I felt great afterwards.

Legs were a little tight on my run tonight, but things start to slow down from here on out. Slow down for what you ask? We'll, I'm sure most people can figure it out by now. If it isn't obvious, check back this weekend for more info.

Como Zoo Soo Foo!

2010-09-08T17:42:00.007-05:00

This week has been busy and I choose to play some video games instead of blog, so I'm a bit light on posts. Last weekend we had an awesome fun labor day weekend, ending Monday with a long morning and afternoon at the Como Zoo Amusement Park. Andrea got a few end of season unlimited ride passes for a good deal.

Megan loved the swing ride, she had recently gone on one while staying with our friends over vacation. She could also go on a bunch of rides by herself, which was really cool! She just loved picking whatever rides she wanted to go on.

Casey was even able to get in on the action, doing one ride by herself and a spinning tea-cup ride with me. She was having a great time all day, check out the video of her at the end.

For the bigger rides, we just took turns with Megan. That Frog Hopper ride was awesome fun for the kids! Getting her ready for some Power Tower action in a few years. She did it 2 more times by herself.

We ended the day stumbling across a kids entertainer/juggler/magician guy. Megan quickly ran to the front row and sat down in a chair to watch. No big deal we thought, as we hung back. Next thing we know, Megan is up walking around on stage with this guy. I'm thinking, do I run up and get her off and make a scene or do I just let this play out? I mean, the guys a professional child entertainer. He knows how to deal with this right? Sure enough, he got her involved with a rope magic trick and she did okay and went back to her seat when directed. Whewww...

You know you've completely exhausted your kids when they end the day with handfuls of cotton candy that they are too tired to even eat. Now that's a great day.

Here is a cute video of Casey from the start of the morning, hanging out on one of those "insert-a-quarter" rides (that I think are actually 0.75 cents now).

And another video of us at this park area that is inside the middle of the amusement park, having fun on this zip-cord thingy. After doing it a few times, Casey held on all by herself (with Andrea walking along to catch her should she drop). She loved it!

Even More Food and Wine

2010-09-01T20:53:00.013-05:00

Saturday morning I woke up with a minor hangover. Just enough to feel dehydrated with a mild headache. I ate a nice big breakfast, downed a couple Advil, and headed out for a morning run. 6 miles later, my headache was gone and I was feeling great. Man I love running, it is a serious cure all.

While everyone else at the resort was out enjoying the afternoon weather doing silly things like golfing or fishing, we stuck to the various indoor activities. First up was a pastry demonstration. Madden's pastry chef of 16 years showed us how she prepared various desserts we were going to have for dinner. (and then we sampled some!)

I left that presentation early to head over to the home beer brewing demonstration. Oddly enough, the night before I met Dan, the executive chef of RJ's American Grill. Just so happens Dan is heavy into home brewing. He quickly schooled me on the primary difference between All-Grain brewing and extract brewing. Basically it amounts to the difference between baking a cake from scratch or making it from a mix you buy at the store. "Serious" home brewers do all-grain brewing. Is this a new hobby I'd like to explore? Yes... at this point in my life? No. But I can clearly see sometime in the near future investing in the space and equipment for some all-grain home brewing. In the meantime, I think I might ask for a cheap intro-starter extract brewing kit for Christmas, and try to brew up some beers that would be ready by spring or early summer time.

After downing a few beer samples, we headed over to the next presentation, hand crafted chocolates! They were totally awesome, although the guy doing the presentation was a bit eccentric. We had to take our chocolate and bolt mid way through, because next up was the serious event of the day: Wine tasting!

The wine tasting was a very elaborate setup, with a large projector presentation and everything. I learned more about wine in that 2 hours than I ever knew my whole life. The wine tasting itself was 10 different wines, 5 white, 5 red. It was called a "tier" tasting, because you started out with the cheap wines and worked up to the grand finale expensive wine. And that last one was damn good, and noticeably different. There were only two samples where I drank the whole sample, and that was one of them.

After that all that wine, we both needed a little break so we napped (passed out?) for about an hour before dinner. Dinner ended up being a choose-your-own-adventure, with all the chefs lined up around the edges of a large meeting room. Each one was preparing their dish, and you could just pick whatever you wanted. In between the chefs was even more wine and champagne, although by this time we had both had enough. Here were some of my favorite dishes of the night:

Left: Scallops with coleslaw. Right: Sea bass with brussel sprouts (awesome!)

Left: Dan's crab cakes (best dish of the night) Right: Grouper fish (10 min wait!)

The dessert display and a picture of us prior to dinner.

Some dishes not pictured included goat, Asian salad with duck, veal, lamb chops, and prime rib. After dinner, we headed back to the room, full, exhausted, and ready to relax the rest of the night. The next morning I woke up at 5:30am for my big 18 mile run, which was the perfect cap to the weekend. We had one last big brunch where some of the chefs were back preparing even more exotic breakfast items. I stuck to some basics, although I did get a cup of a very tasty chia tea.

Vacation Ups and Downs

2010-08-29T21:47:00.015-05:00

I like to split my long vacation posts into two posts to cover everything. After getting everyone loaded up Thursday afternoon, we headed over to my friends place in Woodbury to drop off the kids. Upon arriving, my car promptly died. We were bringing both cars over there, so they would have an additional vehicle to transport 5 kids throughout the weekend. So worst case, we had a backup car. I decided that maybe it was just a dead battery, so I quickly bought a new one and threw it in. Car started fine. Okay, problem solved. Nope. We made it as far as Anoka only to have everything electronic die again. Luckily, I quickly exited onto "main street" Anoka, and found a car dealership with a repair shop. They diagnosed my dead alternator. 3 hours and $425 dollars later, we were back on our way up north for our vacation. Not exactly how I wanted to start things out.

The blow was softened slightly when we ate a late dinner around 8pm, and realized we could pick anything off an awesome menu. I went with blackened chicken and lobster and Andrea went with lobster manicotti. We ordered dessert too because why not? It's included!

When we booked our reservation, all they had left were 2 queen beds. On the plus side, there was also 2 bathrooms! The view from our room was nice, but I think I spent a combined 5 minutes sitting out there enjoying it.

Friday was our "free" day to do whatever we felt like. We both got a little exercise in, and I did 14 miles on Paul Bunyan trail. After her run, Andrea got an hour long massage. Then we had a light lunch and just goofed off around the resort for a little while, killing time before catching an afternoon movie. Sadly, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was no longer showing and we were forced to see The Other Guys instead.

Friday night, our dinner was a cookout on the beach. There was live music, lots of free wine tasting, and the food was okay. In hind sight, we would have rather just gone back to the nice restaurant inside, all things considered. I had a few drinks and enough wine tasting to get a nice buzz going.

After dinner, we hit up a chocolate fondue and free beer tasting. A new local brewery, Brainerd Lakes Beer, had just recently become available to the public. They had two beers available, both seemed good to me although I liked the One-Eyed Pike better. Even Andrea liked it, and normally she doesn't like ales.

After a few beers and dessert, there was supposed to be "Wine Bingo" at the resort bar. Andrea headed off to bed and I headed to the bar, ordered a drink and listened to the live music. One of the band members I swear looked just like Napoleon Dynamite. It was too funny... Finally at 10pm, the waitresses started handing out bingo cards. The prize was a ginormous 3 liter bottle of wine. If you've never seen one, trust me, it's huge. I didn't win, but they were going to have games again at 11pm and midnight. I stuck around long enough to rack up a $33 dollar tab and play one more round of bingo, but by then I was wiped and had to hit the sack.

Coming later this week... my reports on running slightly hung over, home beer brewing, wine tasting, and an incredible amount of insanely awesome food.

Vacation Imminent

2010-08-24T20:23:00.002-05:00

And it couldn't be here too soon! The last mini-vacation that we had was back in May of 2007. My Mom watched Megan for a full 3 days, while we enjoyed time up north. It was also the first time I ever ran a distance 14 miles. Oh, those were the days. This weekend I'll be running a combined total of 34 miles. Knowing me, I'll probably extend it a few miles because the Paul Bunyan Trail is some of the best running conditions ever.

For this weekend, we are going to send the girls over to a good friends. They also have 3 other kids, age range 7-11. This is great for Megan, and we know she is going to have a blast the entire time. Casey will be different story. We are confident she will manage, based on some recent interactions. It might be rough for the first hour or so but our friends kids loved playing with her, and I think they will do a great job of making her forget all about Mom & Dad leaving.

Our actual vacation is at Maddens Resort on Gull lake. I know, you might be thinking, why go there again when we've been there 3 times already? Well, because we've enjoyed it every time and why not do something you know you will enjoy? On top of that, the theme is "Food & Wine Weekend" which sounds awesome. I'll probably just barely break even on calories in/out with my 34 miles running. There is chocolate and wine tasting all weekend, meals by top chefs from around MN, and who knows what else! I'm looking forward to a Home Beer Brewing demonstration! Maybe I'll come back home with a desire to explore a new hobby.

I've even convinced Andrea that we should take some time to see a movie too. Guess what we will be seeing? That's right!! Scott Pilgrim vs. the World! Don't think the weekend could get much better. I'll give the full report when we get back.

Scott Anderson vs. the World

2010-08-18T21:19:00.007-05:00

Okay so before I get into my advertisement for my brother and his youtube videos, I have to stress again about how awesome of a movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was. And I also need to get my 2 cents out there to let other people know they should go see it. And when I say "other people", I'm talking about any of my geek friends (I'm looking at you Steve).

I wouldn't argue that the movie has a niche audience, and so I guess I can understand why it did so bad at the box office. I just didn't think it would do THAT bad. So what separates this movie audience from your standard comic book movie? I suppose there is a certain amount of universal appeal to the whole superhero/save the world/fight the bad guys movie, that is lacking from Scott Pilgrim.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is about a slacker 22 year old kid struggling between dating a 17 year old catholic high school girl and the girl of his dreams. And then all of a sudden people start fighting video game style, and there are tons of laughs in between. I haven't laughed that hard in the theater since the famous scene from Bruce Almighty. Anyway, go see this movie if you even have the slightest thought you might like it, because it IS an epic of epic epicness.

Anyway, enough about Scott Pilgrim and more about Scott Anderson. My brother wanted to share with my visitors (aka family members) the fact that he is now posting on youtube.

Scott's YouTube Channel
Anderson Family Photos

Most of his videos are clips of 10 month old Elizabeth learning the new tricks that almost-toddlers begins to learn. But some of his videos are more.... creative? For example:

Plantars Acting Up

2010-08-15T17:46:00.002-05:00

This week was my peak running mileage of the summer training. The extra mileage combined with the hottest and most humid week of the summer just didn't mix well. My plantars started hurting on Thursday, so I took a few anti-inflammatory this weekend. With some extra icing time, the foot is okay. Thankfully today the weather was perfect. I had almost forgot what it's like to run in good weather.

Aside from my foot hurting, this weekend was a boat load of fun. Saturday morning we took the girls to the Children's Museum. This was Casey's first trip unless you count the one time she went while Andrea was still pregnant! Everyone had a great time, and the only reason we had to leave was due to tired kids. Casey literally fell asleep the minute we left the parking ramp.

Right after that, I caught Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. This movie was down right awesome. From the intro Zelda song, to the one-liners, to the fighting, and all the video game references in between. Sadly, the box office has spoken, and this movie is a flop. That's too bad, because I enjoyed this movie more than a lot this year. I honestly would have thought this movie appealed to the video game masses out there, but apparently they were all too busy playing Starcraft 2 this weekend?

Saturday evening Casey went to church daycare where Andrea was helping out, and she had a good time with the other toddlers. Meanwhile, Megan and I hit Nicollet Commons Splash Park. The weather turned cooler around 5:30pm, but it was still awesome and Megan didn't want to leave.

Today was the only bummer part of the whole weekend. We packed up everyone to go to swimming at the YMCA, while Megan had her last swimming lesson of the summer. Sadly, when we got there someone had thrown up in the pool so it was closed. On top of that, Megan didn't want to do her lessons so we just left. But we made the best of it, and went out for ice cream and then visited a park.

Now I just have to make it through 8 more days of work before I can enjoy a very much needed vacation...

My Journey

2010-08-09T19:42:00.007-05:00

A few weeks ago I happened to check the Do Groove web site, and was surprised to see my picture come up on the front page (I'm the second dot!!). I shared it with a few family members and Andrea threw it up on Facebook. So what took me so long to share it here? I'm not sure I guess. I think it has a lot to do with my mixed feelings about it.

One the one hand, I am proud of the changes I've made in my life. If my story motivates even one person to make similar changes, then it's all worth it. But on the other hand, I have a hard time accepting praise for essentially screwing up my life first. I wouldn't be in this video and I wouldn't be sharing this story if I had just lived my life the way I should have all along.

There are lots of people who do exactly that. People who make health, fitness, and nutrition a part of their daily life from the get go. Those are the people who should be praised. Those are the people we should look up to. The parents who give their children the SKILLS to live healthy and TEACH nutrition. The families that know the dangers of fast food. The people that know the importance of daily physical activity. They are the ones we should do videos of and learn from.

The video itself is well edited, and I'm glad it didn't paint video games in a huge negative light. Video games were simply my primary form of inactivity, but they were not to blame. There are many types of inactivity, and which ever one is your favorite, is not the bad guy. It was my CHOICE to spend time exclusively with video games, at the expense of everything else. Choice is always the key.

I also didn't talk about alcohol and my personal struggles with alcohol. Alcohol contributed greatly to my poor health, because alcohol is 100% useless calories that your body can do nothing with. Quite frankly, I was afraid to bring up the subject during the interview. I've been sober 2 out of the last 5 years and for the most part, not done much drinking this year (but I have had some). If wine is included at our "Food & Wine" vacation weekend, you can bet I'll be enjoying some! I can freely admit that at this point in my life, I'm not ready to say I'll never drink again. But who knows, after time anything can change, and maybe some day a decision like that would not be that big of a deal.

Another thing I did not mention in the video is my loathing of fast food. Obviously I'm sure I could never have gotten away with saying how horrible McDonald's food is, or how I think fast food contributes a lot to why people are obese in this country. It would have been edited out for legal reasons. And yes, I eat fast food every now and then, but when I do, I remind myself what a poison it is. The difference is now I might eat a chicken nugget or two. I can remember how 10 years ago, I would roll out of bed hung over every Sunday morning around 11am, and then head over to McDonald's to purchase 5 or 6 0.39 cent cheeseburgers. Nothing better than starting your day out with 1,800 calories.

But that was then, and this is now. I don't think anyone realizes how much change I've really made. The visible change is only the tip of the iceberg. So if you've read this far, you've gotten a small glimpse.

The whole story, my two year journey

Generally Tired

2010-08-06T21:23:00.004-05:00

Survived another week, and honestly, I should be more stressed out, but I'm not. Probably because I'm simply too tired to be stressed. Some of the things I've been working towards at work are coming to fruition. I've cut through the major red tape barriers and will be finally getting my ideas out to some of the real decision makers. I'm excited about that, but in some ways will just be glad to have it reach that point. Simply because I'll finally be able to say to myself that I pushed my ideas as absolutely far as they could go.

In other news, Megan has been asking me every single day this week, "Are you going to stay home tomorrow?". Constantly answering no has been pretty tough, but at least tonight I got to say yes. We don't have too much planned this weekend, so hopefully something will come to me tomorrow. It's my Mom's birthday today, and I tried calling her at least 4 times with no luck. I ended up taking the cheap way out and just texted her a happy birthday. Sunday we'll get together and have a birthday dinner of Famous Dave's.

Not much else new going on this week. The fact that it is August already is still mind boggling. It feels like I bought my "new" computer a few months ago, but it was back in October of 09!! On the plus side, it also means we are only 3 weeks away from a long needed vacation. I probably haven't mentioned that yet, so maybe I'll wait to post more details on that in the next few days.

Surprise

2010-08-01T09:21:00.004-05:00

As I was preparing for my run yesterday morning, Megan told me she had a surprise for me when I got back. As soon as I returned, she immediately jumped up and told me she could tell me the surprise now. She had me lean in close, and whispered to me, "We can go to the Zoo today!" I looked at Andrea with a 'Did you set this up?' look on my face, and she said not at all. Well, I wasn't about to disappoint, so we got ready and headed out to the Zoo!

It started out okay, with some cloud cover and decent temps. But the sun came out and it quickly got much to hot for my taste. We enjoyed a lot of time at the new playground area, which was brand new for Casey. And then we went inside and checked out the new baby dolphin who is only 2 weeks old.

Megan is quite the climber these days. She loves those indoor climbing walls whenever we come across one. Another year or two and I think I might introduce her to belaying.

Casey enjoyed the bouncy fishes and climbing inside the turtles. She went on a few slides and found some friends to walk around with. She got a little scared when we went into the dark cave that has a big bear inside, but she was okay.

After the Zoo, we hit up a lunch at Chili's, which was okay but a little greasy. I just pigged out on the bottomless chips and then cancelled my actual order. I was still stuffed just from the chips and eating the left overs from the two kids meals we ordered. I was so full I couldn't even eat dinner later that night.

Now the trick is to get through today with out over eating at any paticular meal in order to "make up" for missing a meal yesterday.

Record Hot Run

2010-07-28T21:33:00.005-05:00

I was lamenting to my buddy this weekend about the fact that for all my running this year, I haven't actually gotten any personal records. In part it's due to my plantars and not wanting to force another injury and also due to just a different style of training. But sure enough, I had a record this week, running in probably the hottest weather I've ever done. I think my previous record was 93 degrees, but Tuesday night was 94! It was only a 6 mile recovery run, but it might as well have been 20 miles for how hard it was.

Tonight we baby sat my niece, so my brother and his wife could go see Inception. Sadly, he came to the conclusion about the movie that I refused to give in to. Because if you assume the movie ends that way, well, quite frankly the movie just sucks. But there are just too many damn hints to that particular assumption, which means I now have to change my review of the movie and say, it sucks!

I also promised some more pictures, so I snapped a couple tonight while we were playing with the girls. First we played with play dough for awhile, which got everywhere as it usually does. Somehow it even made it downstairs on the carpet...

Then Casey started having some fun playing around in her cousins car seat. She was rocking back and forth, having a great time.

Once a week slacker

2010-07-24T19:35:00.010-05:00

Clearly something big must be taking up all my free time, preventing me from blogging. But alas, it is just more work. Megan and I are watching Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoons in the evenings as well. We are just about done with season 2 and will be starting up the last season, maybe tonight!

I've been accused of not posting enough pictures of the kids lately, and rightly so. To counter that, I'll throw up a few pictures and a video today and see if I can't get a few more up later this week.

First up we have a couple of cute Casey popsicle shots. The one out on the deck is so dang adorable. She's just lounging in her little froggy chair enjoying that chocolate popsicle.

Couple other recent pictures, one with the grandparents and one with Casey holding my medal from my recent half marathon.

You may remember my recent post about Casey dancing to the Secret Agent man song over at a park near our place. What I didn't share is what Megan was up to during that time. Here is the full video... watch closely for what happens at the end. Somehow I don't think I'm going to have to worry too much about protecting her from boys...

Entertainment Update

2010-07-17T21:24:00.004-05:00

Slow week on the blog, so I thought I'd just run down a few more things I've been spending my entertainment dollars on lately. Last weekend, in part for a birthday present for my brother, we went and saw Star Wars in Concert. We had great seats, eye level with the orchestra. It was a fun experience, although I often had to remind myself I was listening to a live orchestra and not just watching a hugely over priced trailer for Star Wars. I think the only thing that would have made the experience better for me was to actually listen to it in a normal orchestra house type place that didn't have to enhance the sound with microphones and speakers.

Movie wise, I actually caught two movies this week! That's totally not normal for me. First up, I saw Predators, which originally I had no plans to see. But it was getting good reviews and I got an invite out to see it, so I thought what the heck? I wasn't that impressed. It was mostly meh, with nothing overly cool. *SPOILER ALERT* The samurai fight scene was kinda lame, and the ending with the guy covered in mud just like Arnold was too much for me. I don't care how buff he was, he looked like a stupid scrawny version of Arnold. And then when he starts yelling "Kill me, I'm here, kill me" just like Arnold, I sorta ignored the rest of the movie. *END SPOILER*

To clean out the memory of that movie, Andrea and I saw Inception today, and that movie was down right awesome (and not just because I have a thing for Ellen Page). It was 2.5 hours of enjoyment, leading up to an ending that sorta left a bad taste in my mouth. Not because it was bad, but because it required me to leave the theater having to decide for myself how it ended. Obviously that is the whole damn point of the movie, so that's why it was so awesome from beginning to end.

The other reason I liked the movie so much, is because I have personally experienced some of the aspects of dreaming they explore in the movie. On more than one occasion, I have "woke up" from a dream, only to realize I'm still dreaming. I also have my own set of "reality tests" that I use when dreaming to become Lucid. Sadly, some aspects they explored in the movie are completely contradictory to known facts about dreaming and even some scientifically proven aspects of dreaming. Examples: in dreaming, text or words on paper are rarely meaningful or constant, often containing strange letters and characters. Also, mirrors often do not work or project a distorted or incorrect reflection. This all has to do with the part of the brain that actually does the dreaming.

The other aspect of dreaming that was way off from real life studies, is the concept of the passage of time in dreams. The movie tried to sell us that dreaming takes place "faster" then real world, the deeper you go into the sub conscious, to the point where if you go deep enough, you can dream out years of time in a matter of a few "real" hours. Sadly, this is all false, as time has been proven to move at pretty much the same rate as real life in dreams, and that some aspects of doing things in dreams actually takes LONGER in the dream, then in real life. This study here basically explains it all, which is information I already knew going into this movie.

Still, just the raw fact that I love the various aspects of dreaming and my own personal experiences with dreaming so much, this movie was a huge hit for me, and I really enjoyed it.

Last Airbender Hate

2010-07-12T17:09:00.005-05:00

The first review I read about the movie The Last Airbender was in the Star Tribune. It got 3 out of 4 stars, and so I was hopeful the movie would deliver on my expectations. I ended up seeing it over July 4th weekend, and enjoyed it a lot.

So why all the hate? Everywhere I look people are ripping on this movie. Sure, I never saw the original cartoon series (watching it now with Megan actually). Is the movie the exact same as the cartoon? No... but what [insert source material]-Made-Into-Movie is exactly like the [insert source material]?

Sure there are exceptions. Sin City? That movie is so close to the book, the dialog is line by line from the book. But that's more the exception more than the rule. Most anything else is an "adaptation". Harry Potter, Watchmen, GI-Joe, A-Team, every random comic book-made-into-movie.

Yet almost every complaint about this movie is how it's "so not like the cartoon series." I sat there watching the first episode of the cartoon going, "Wow this is just like the movie.". You can do a lot more character development and story lines with 3 seasons of a cartoon show, and no matter how you slice it, it would be damn hard to condense down to even a trilogy of movies. Hell, Harry Potter can't even condense a single book into a single movie. It has to do the last book in 2 parts! Why? Because it's a great way to milk even more money out of the fans.

Needless to say, I'm bummed that the movie is getting such a bad reception. I would have loved to watch two more in a trilogy series of this story line. Sadly, people are just making fun of M. Night and I highly doubt another movie in the series will be made.

Working Too Much

2010-07-08T20:07:00.005-05:00

Short work week but still felt longer. I think it's these long summer days, combined with all the recent time off. Makes you just want to take more and more time off... Instead, I find myself doing just a little bit more work then I should. Getting to work at 6am and sticking around past what would be a normal day. And then finding myself logging in at night after girls are in bed doing a little more. Not really sure why I insist on doing this.

Mostly it just has to do with the basic fact that once I start something, I have to see it through to completion. Or I'm constantly thinking about it until I can get back to it. Adding to the problem, is that I have no other distractions right now in the post-evening hours. Few weeks ago I was playing Tales of Vesperia on an XBOX 360 I loaned from my brother. It was a fun game and I poured 60+ hours into it in probably a 2 week period. Not bad at all...

Right now I'm waiting for StarCraft II to be released, it's due out on July 27th, but 3 weeks is actually a long time without another side project. My running sorta counts, but it's so ingrained to my normal routine that it's hard to call it a hobby anymore. Just wrapped up a 6-day in a row series, something I've probably never done.

Anyway, where was I going with this? No clue... I guess I just need to find some more hobbies, which really translates to getting back into gaming. I've got my eye on purchasing "the new XBOX 360", once it is available in the $199 dollar version. Maybe it already is? Hmmm... time to go browsing.

Update from Microsoft: "We will offer a $199 Xbox 360 this fall. We have no other details to share at this time."

Bleh, "fall" is pretty far off, not to mention, not very exact. Thanks for nothing Microsoft!

Straight up Ass Whoppin

2010-07-04T10:18:00.007-05:00

That's what I took this morning. I've done races with hills. I've run in bad weather conditions, both heat or rain. But when all those conditions come together in perfect harmony, along with my insistence to push myself to achieve my goals, you have a recipe for disaster. The race this morning was by far the hardest race I have ever run, and I don't say that lightly. This was the first time I ever had one of the medical staff come up to me at the finish line, as I was attempting to steady myself. For a moment or two, I really did wonder if I would pass out. But I didn't, and I survived.

I started the race out strong, and feeling good. The heat was first, with everyone sweating just standing around at the starting line. For about 2.5 miles, I stayed with the pace group, actually moving a few strides ahead of the pacer so I wasn't so surrounded by people. Then the rain started.

This wasn't just rain, it was a torrential down pour. I'm surprised we didn't hear sirens or anything. Within minutes, everything was wet. Feet felt more like lead weights, soaked with water. At one point, the course narrowed into a section about 10 feet across with barriers on each side that acted as a channel for the water. Everyone just had to grin and bare it as we ran through 2-3 inches of water with no where else to go but right through it. Still, despite that, I kept my goal going, slightly ahead of the pace runner.

Then around mile 7.5 came "The Hill". I've run a lot of hills, in fact every Sunday my run has a very big hill on it. I also live basically on the top of a huge hill, so no matter where I run around my house there are some hills to deal with. But this hill, in these conditions, and the pace I was running, was like instant death. A good portion of people around me dropped down to walks. I dug REALLY deep and finished the hill running. The pacer passed me at the top of the hill, and he was completely alone. Not a single person was still with him. I could see him ahead of me for about another mile, and then I never saw him again.

After "The Hill", I never really recovered. My body spent too much getting up that hill, and despite getting back down to my goal pace for a little while longer, I knew it wouldn't hold. The last couple miles I had nothing left, I just relied on my training to get me through, focus on one foot in front of the other. The last 3 miles were the longest miles I have ever run. I wanted nothing more but to stop running, just give up, quit, what's the point, I've got nothing left. But I didn't. One foot in front of the other. As I ran down the last length, no one ahead or behind me, I got to hear the announcer call out my name. Put my hands up in triumph and crossed the finish line.

The red line clearly shows why this was the hardest run I have ever done. I ran within a few beats of my maximum heart rate for a solid 9 miles, which means for 9 miles, I was spending every last ounce of energy my body had to give. You might have guessed, I did NOT do any additional running after this bitch. Still crazy? Definitly.

Guilty Pleasures

2010-07-01T19:40:00.006-05:00

My latest musical guilty pleasures are on somewhat different ends of the spectrum. Okay, maybe the are both catchy pop songs that would drive my brother crazy, but the artists themselves are pretty different.

First up is the new song by the oh so yummy Katy Perry, California Gurls. I liked some of her other music, and this song made me bounce around in my car. But damn, the video took it too a whole new level. And to think she was raised by Christian pastor parents. I'm sure they are proud.

It doesn't hurt that she is also basically a Zooey Deschanel look alike, who I also think is muchas hot. I liked the parody of this song that Andrea found called Minnesota Gurls. That's some good stuff, and not bad with half a million views. Grain Belt represent!

On the other side of the pop coin, is a new song called Bulletproof by someone I had never heard of named La Roux, which is just French for "The Red". I ended up watching a few interviews of Elly Jackson, and she is cool if a bit eccentric. That's prolly why I like her attidude, I mean, I'm eccentric too right? What the difference between eccentric and crazy?

Leading into another 3 day weekend that looks to be semi-busy. I'm looking forward to Avatar: The Last Airbender. Should be a good time. I also have a half marathon race at the ass crack of 6:30am on Sunday morning. I'm going to run with a pace team for the first time ever, which means I have to get there at least 30 minutes early. If I want to do a warmup, I might have to get up before 5am. Did I mention after the race I'll be doing a little more running? Why do all this? Because I'm "eccentric"... or crazy. Yeah, mostly crazy.

Food: In-Depth

2010-06-27T10:37:00.004-05:00

4-day weekend over already? Not surprising, plenty of stuff to keep me busy. Not to mention work calling me Friday night making me do work from home. But let's not get into that shall we?

Back in April, I started some "In-Depth" posts (Running & Work), and I had fully planned on keeping them going but wasn't motivated to get more up in May. So I thought I'd try to do one before June is over and then maybe shoot for 2 more in July. Topic for today? Food and eating!

I have a shitty relationship with food, that much is a given. Like so many other things, it is hard for me to enjoy food (and specifically 'bad' food) in moderation. The best I can do is not buy certain things or keep them in my house. That's only one skirmish in the larger battle of staying away from unhealthy food.

There are a few contributing factors to areas of my unhealthy eating, but most of it all boils down to willpower and a lack of pressing need to change my eating habits. Obviously, a large amount of my eating is healthy. I've developed some routines that keep me in check: healthy oatmeal breakfast every day, packed lunch at work every day, and healthy family evening meals. Some of the problems come when I have to break away from the weekly routine. Other areas are controlling my evening meal portions (eating every ones leftovers), not snacking in the evenings, and not eating badly on the weekends.

The stupid part is that with all my running, I can afford to eat unhealthy (from a calorie intake stand point). My laboratory measured resting metabolic rate was 1,886 calories. On any given run, I'm burning between 900-2,200 calories. Running 5 days a week means that on average, I can consume 3,000-3,400 calories daily without breaking a sweat (pun intended). Yikes, do you have any idea how much bad food you can get away with eating with that many spare calories?

The killer part of that whole equation is a form of Catch-22. Am I eating more because my body needs the additional calories from running more? Or am I running more so that I can eat more? Or am I simply eating more because I can? And this is where the willpower part fails, because regardless of the answer, I should still focus on healthy calories. More fruits, vegetables, simple carbs and proteins, and less hot dogs, processed frozen foods, and random snacking on sugary/salty foods.

So what is the answer? Practically every Monday for the last year, I've said to myself, okay today I will make a change and stop snacking on random bad food. And almost every Monday by noon, my resolve has shattered as someone brings in a random left over cake from some weekend celebration (and even I've brought one in before!). I think the only answer is the one I've been unwilling to face: all or nothing. Time to put my money where my mouth is, and own up to my daily decisions and make a change. Wish me luck!

Fallacy of Potential

2010-06-22T21:17:00.003-05:00

Running 2 miles worth of strideouts (and 8 miles total) in 90 degree weather is a good way to get yourself killed. But that didn't stop me from doing it, or from feeling like a total bad ass when I was finished. Sure, my heart felt like it might bust out of my chest, but that just means I'm that much more manly, right?

During my insane levels of physical exertion today, I started thinking about limits. More specifically, I was thinking about my limits, and how I'm always trying to push myself beyond my capabilities (and not just physical in nature). This lead me to thinking about the word "potential" and a phrase I hate, "full potential".

Why do I hate that phrase you ask? Because it is meaningless. The word potential is an adjective, meaning it has to be used to describe something else. In physics, you don't talk about the "potential" of mass. You talk about it's potential energy. The same concept holds true when talking about your own potential. Potential for what? Potential to be a good father? Potential to eat an entire pizza? Potential to run until you collapse? Don't use the phrase "reaching full potential" unless you at least augment it with a point of reference.

The whole concept of potential is hogwash anyway. Having the POTENTIAL to do anything is meaningless, what matters is the DOING. You can potentially do anything all day, and still not accomplish anything. I could potentially become president some day. But surprise! That's not going to happen. My suspicion is that the most successful, and probably most content/happy people don't even think about what their full potential might be. They are out there DOING exactly what they are capable of doing, and the concept of wondering what their potential might be, is most likely foreign to them.

For the record, I wasn't always like this. Lazy used to be my middle name and I made a full time job out of procrastination. For whatever reason, as part of my overall transformation over the last few years, I just can no longer do that. If I see something that needs doing, I do it. If I think of something I want to achieve, I set out for it. I've stopped bothering to worry about what if's, and just go for it, and see what happens. I find life to be much more fun that way.

Long Week

2010-06-19T17:11:00.003-05:00

This was the first time in a month that I actually had to be at work all 5 days. Thankfully I survived, and next week I'm only doing a 3-day week! Nice. Aside from work, I did a couple of hot runs, and not much else. Megan was at the YMCA day camp all week, that I mentioned before. Despite having a few days of rain, she absolutely loved her time there. It was even more fun because she attented with two neighbor girls that she is friends with.

Today we hit up the Zoo, which was an awesome decision. The weather was so perfect outside, that we didn't even go inside the entire time we were at the zoo. We parked, walked through one of the outdoor enterences, and then went straight to the Zoo Farm. Casey had such a great time in the petting Zoo. I thought she might be a little scared, but she was fearless and loved touching and going up to all the goats.

Not sure what we are doing for Fathers Day tomorrow, but it will probably involve a brunch somewhere. The problem is where? Need to find a place that won't be too insanely busy as to require an hour wait, but have good enough food and service so that we can enjoy it. My brother was saying this new place in town called Wild Bill's was having a brunch thing, but I just got done reading a ton of horrible reviews. Hmmm... anyone got any suggestions? I got a few hours to decide...

NOSUP4U

2010-06-15T19:15:00.006-05:00

I saw that (blog title) on a license plate driving home from work today. Seriously? You like a TV show reference enough to use that as a license plate? Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all about custom license plates. In fact, I've had two in my life so far. They were uber cheap out in Idaho, like $25 bucks.

The first custom plate I had was "DEIMOS1", which sorta sucked because someone already had "DEIMOS". Deimos is better known in Greek mythology as the god of fear, dread and terror. It is also (lesser known) as the first Quake Clan that I joined, and ultimately helped lead/organize the years of 95-98. You can still Google up some hold history on that Clan, including this little nugget I found. Some of the names of people mentioned in that list were long time friends. That was the peak of my time playing Quake, where our clan even beat the likes of "Thresh", who made millions playing video games and even has his own Wiki page. While a part of Clan Deimos, I went by the name NightShade, an online handle I had used since I was 15.

The second custom plate I had was "GRIMDAR", which if you didn't notice by now is the URL of this blog as well. Grimdar Hillmover, to give the full name, was my persona in the online game Everquest. My profile picture? That's artwork someone did for me of my online dwarf character. I've posted before about the time I spent in that game, and there is even an official record of it on the interwebs, 365 days 19 hours 55 minutes. I've never mentioned what exactly I did during that time. For the majority of the time, I was a Guild leader, meaning I had to organize and orchestrate online raids, bringing together 40-70 people, to work together to achieve goals. My more enjoyable memories are the numerous conventions I went to where I met all these people in person, that I spent so many hours with online. Those were some great times, parties, and events I'll never forget.

It's weird looking back on that time in my life, where a video game was so important to me. Where work and home life were just things that got in the way of that next online challenge. The scary part is that no matter how much I try to deny it, there is always going to be a small part of me that misses it. When I think about what exactly it is that I missed, it's boils down pretty quickly to one thing. I was somebody important. I was a "leader", I was respected, and people honestly looked up to me. Whether it was my skills in Quake or my strategic planning in Everquest. People knew who I was, and in my own little world/mind, I was famous.

I remember very well walking around one of the Everquest conventions with my little name tag around my neck, and someone came up to me, so excited to meet the actual Grimdar. They related a long story about how I went out of my way one day to help them out and they never forgot. It's probably the closest I'll ever feel to being a celebrity. And it was a good feeling, and one that is not easily forgotten.

Slow Blog Week

2010-06-11T22:34:00.008-05:00

There wasn't much going on this week, and I couldn't find the time to blog. Instead, I found the time to use one of the new templates available on blogger. I had been thinking about a new look lately, and I like how this turned out. I didn't like how my header graphic looked, so I just removed it for now. I'll be trying to find some new header image to put up there. It's just way to plain right now.

I was off work today, because I always try to take one off around my birthday, mostly as a present for myself. Tomorrow is my actual birthday, and oddly enough, we have absolutely no plans. Maybe I'll just find a way to pass the day away with video games. I haven't mentioned it before, but I currently have my brothers XBox 360.

Today is also special for a different reason, as it marks the anniversary of my blog. This is going to be my 5th year of blogging, which is quite a long time. I never thought I would have kept it up this long, but here I am! People talk about blogs and blogging as if they are the "fax" of the internet. Meaning completely outdated, serving no purpose, and "Who the hell still blogs?". Me baby, me. Screw you Facebook and Twitter.

We decided to take the girls over to Edinborough Park, which is kind of funny. Because apparently it has been exactly one year since I took Megan last, which was one year before that. So... at least we're consistent?

This evening, we attended a free concert at a local park we go to often. They are doing free concerts every Friday night for the rest of the summer, so we will probably go to a bunch of them since it's just down the road. There was supposed to be food vendors, but a bunch backed out at the last minute because they were afraid of bad weather. But it turned out to be a very nice night for playing in the park while listening to music.

Here are some videos from today. First up, we have Megan and I shooting baskets.

And another video, this one of Casey dancing along to the live band doing the song, "Secret Agent Man". This song will forever make me think of Chuck E Cheese.

Rainy Day Fun

2010-06-05T20:36:00.004-05:00

We did our best to make lemonade out lemons today, as we had all these out door activities planned and it was raining on and off all day. Started the morning out with a visit to the YMCA Day Camp Streefland. Megan is going there in two weeks for a week long day camp, and they were having an open house so I thought it would be a good time to just visit and get her excited about going. It worked out well and we had a great time and a free lunch of hot dogs.

After that, we headed over to Primrose, where Megan attended for a month last year. I never talked about it much at the time, but basically we needed some extra help that month and daycare provided us with that. Primrose was also having an open house, and they have the BEST open houses. Once again, they didn't disappoint. Bouncers, petting zoo, pony rides, kids ferris wheel, face painting, and more food. They did take money for "tickets" but it was super cheap, and I had no problem doing that.

In other news, something cool that occurred recently that I didn't even mention. Megan has officially graduated from ECFE speech class! Not that I didn't think she wouldn't, but it was great to get that stamp of approval from the professionals. They put her through all sorts of tests, not just language and speech related, and she did fine on everything. I have absolutely no regrets of removing TV from my house, even if it wasn't a factor in her improvements, I'm sure it didn't hurt.

At 2 and 1/2, we were just getting Megan to say a few words and had started in on sign language. At 1 year, Casey knows well over 10-12 signs, and can already ask for the things she wants (through non-verbal communication). I've learned the hard way how much of an impact parents have on their kids in the early years. I can freely admit that I failed Megan in the early years of her development, and I have no problems owning up to that. And to anyone that might try to sugar coat it, or try and tell me kids can develop at different rates, I will gladly call bullshit, because I've experienced first hand what a difference we as parents can make for our kids.

If there is one thing I have learned, is that making mistakes is always the best way to improve yourself. How come I can never seem to just skip the first part, and not make the mistakes in the first place?

Insane Luck

2010-06-01T20:33:00.002-05:00

Apparently running during rush hour in the suburbs is a bad idea. I drove home expecting to hit the treadmill due to rain, but by the time I got near the house, the rain had let up. So instead, I went into the gym to change and go running outside, between 4:30pm - 5:30pm.

I was almost hit at stop sign intersections three times. Each time the person was totally clueless and coasts right into the crosswalk section of the stop sign in question. Once I had to completely stop or get hit, and the guy finally looks up and notices me. I'm standing there with my arms up in a questioning manner, as if to say, "WTF dude?". His window was down, and he goes, "Oh sorry buddy."

This just made me even more angry, because it made me think of the Dane cook skit, where he talks about people calling you Pal or Buddy that are clearly not your buddy. Fast forward to 3:45, and you'll see what I'm talking about. I kept my mouth shut and continued on. I finished the run and made it home safe. But I think I'll be keeping my after work runs to paths and lakes, and no more rush hour sidewalk running.

Beat the Heat

2010-05-29T21:07:00.004-05:00

What an awesome start to the 4 day weekend, and it's only half over! Friday we decided to try something new, and took a trip out to Como Zoo. Believe it or not, this was something new for the entire family. I've been to Como Zoo before, but probably not in 20 years or more. It was hot, but we enjoyed seeing the unique animals like giraffes, zebras, kudus, and ostriches. Casey had a blast, and at the end Megan and I went on the Tilt-a-Whirl which was mad fun. The only bummer was that the polar bears didn't arrive until June 3rd! We missed it by just a few days. We've decided to make a return trip for the polar bears and the dragon roller coaster.

Today was another hot one, with a high of 90 degrees. I did an 8 miler starting at 7am, and was still soaked when I finished. After that was Casey's official 1st birthday party. Tons of food and cake, I'm still full. Casey slept through the first half of the party but had fun once she woke up. We keep our birthday parties pretty low key, but I'm thinking we might do something bigger for Megan's 5th later this year.

After the birthday party, we even found time to sneak away and catch a movie, curtiousy of baby sitting by Grandma Gayle. We saw Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. We both enjoyed it, it was not a movie to be taken seriously. It delivered on action, small amount of plot, hot female lead, and some fun twists and turns along the way.

Megan all dressed up, ready for the party.

I can't auto-fix the red eye in this picture, or Casey ends up looking like some sort of alien.

Another cute shot of Casey, with me hiding in the background.

Eating her birthday cake, and loving it.

Tomorrow is supposed to be cooler with some rain possible. Going to get my first real long run of the year in, and start as early as I can handle in order to get out before it gets to hot. Need to work off all that birthday cake and other horrible amounts of calories I consumed today. Still trying to get back down to 180 before the summer ends, and so far, I've not come close.

Facebook Final Decision

2010-05-26T20:32:00.005-05:00

Final is such a strong word. Who knows what the future might bring. Maybe in 10 years the only way to get a job is to be on Facebook. And cars might fly. So one of the last few people I knew that wasn't on Facebook finally joined, giving me pause to actually consider it again. I thought, hey, I'll join Facebook, and just post links to my blog and people can come here.

Then I read an article in Time magazine about Facebook and that helped me solidify my decision to stay away from it. I could say a bunch about privacy and the way Facebook makes it convoluted for average people to keep their information hidden, and all the other shady things that they do, but I don't have much to stand on in the privacy argument. I have a public blog where I do basically the same information sharing with the world.

Naw, for me, it's about the money. You'd have to be sorta clueless not to realize that Facebook generates millions of dollars in revenue. Sure, the CEO spouts off about information sharing making the world a better place, and all this peace and love type crap, but really it's just all about the Benjamin's. I spend all day at work putting more money in someone elses pocket then my own, why would I want to spend my free time doing the same damn thing?

The funny part is that even I made money off internet advertising. The year was 1994 and I was a freshmen at college. I had a college website up with questionable content, and was approached by someone to put adds on my page with click-through revenue. I made $400 bucks in a single month at the peak. You'd have thought I would have turned that into my own empire. Instead, I was contacted by the college Chancellor and told to take my web site down or face legal action.

So no, I'm not going to contribute to some stupid advertising revenue generating crazy machine, no matter how many other people join. If I want to keep in touch with someone, I'll email them. I'll call them. I'll invite them over for dinner. Now I just have to hope that by the time my girls grow up, Facebook has lost it's uber importance with the teenage crowd.

Bring It

2010-05-23T15:03:00.004-05:00

Scorcher this morning. I didn't start my run until 8am and it was already muggy as heck. I pushed out a solid 13.5 miles, focusing on keeping my heart rate at a specific level despite the humidity. Recently, I actually paid good hard cash to get my VO₂ max and Anaerobic Threshold numbers measured in a laboratory. Maybe it's a little obsessive, but I've only got so many hobbies. Might as well spend money on the things I enjoy.

With Casey turning one in just a few days, I find myself once again thinking about the way I perceive the passage of time as I get older. (and for the record, it speeds up - a lot). Even last night we had some friends over for dinner and Andrea was commenting how everything speeds up once you become parents. It's so weird, and so true.

I think it has to do with the "new factor". It's like when you go on vacation to a new place. The vacation seems to fly by because every day you get to experience something new. Parenting is the same way. Virtually every day is a new experience, or... more often a new challenge. There might be short periods of "sameness" but they are rare. The sum of all this hard work is that time seems to fly by, and I sometimes have to look around and remind myself how I got here.

Today I was looking through pictures of Megan from year 1 to 2, and I forgot how much more change is coming. I'm looking forward to two kids that can play together instead of having to protect Casey non stop. Hopefully Megan will get past that phase soon too. And of course, having two kids that sleep through the night in the same room will be a huge bonus for everyone in the house once that happens.

I posted once before about how my life recently felt like a roller coaster. I think if I had to adjust that now, I'd say that I've survived the first big down hill. It was scarier and harder then I would have liked, but here we go. Bring on the next crest and some more crazy ups and downs. I'm ready for it.

Work or Play

2010-05-18T20:22:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow at work is a big presentation. It's finally the chance to get my big idea off the ground. Not that I think it will go anywhere, but you miss 100% of the shots you don't take right? I thought about how I could plug in to work tonight, and do some more tweaking on the presentation. I realized instead that work will go on. Changing a few words here and there isn't going to have any impact. In fact, in a lot of ways, the outcome is most likely already determined. Not in the "all future is predetermined" sort of way, but in the sense that either this big idea is going to noticed by the real decision makers or it won't. And if it doesn't, then hey, I gave it my best shot.

Instead, I decided that more play would be better for me tonight. Just got done dancing around the basement with the 3 loves of my life, listening to fun dance tracks for the last 30 minutes, and it was great. As the song goes, "Dance... even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room." Great advice, I'd highly recommend it.

The weather couldn't be better. This last weekend I got my 3-days in a row of running in, with some more running tonight. It's down right scary to me how much I enjoy running now. I leave work on a night like today, and the second I step outside my heart skips a beat in anticipation at the running conditions. I signed up for a half marathon race on July 4th. I plan on running it with a pace team, which will be the first time I've ever done that. Should be interesting.

Rain Sucks

2010-05-13T21:16:00.004-05:00

4 days straight of rain is seriously getting old. Thankfully the weekend forecast is looking good so I should be able to get some outdoor runs in. So far this week I have technically only exercised once, so I'm going to try and do a 3-day over the weekend starting tomorrow morning at 5am.

On Monday this week, I bought a new toy. Someone at work was selling it through the inter-office classifieds. It's called the WeeRide Co-Pilot:

It was only used 2-3 times by the people that owned it, so it is basically in brand new condition. I was so excited to show it to Megan when I bought it, because our neighbor has one and she has asked about riding it a few times. Then it decides to rain all week so I can't even go outside with her once! Finally tonight I get it hooked up and try it out... and it's too big! It doesn't look like it would be, and Megan is very tall for her age, but even with the seat lowered all the way, she can't get her feet on the ground. This means that even the slightest imbalance could throw her off because she would have no way to catch herself.

Needless to say, this was a huge bummer for me. I thought she'd love it and fit it right out of the gate, and that we'd even try a bike ride this weekend. Sadly, it looks like I'll have to tuck it away in the garage for this year and try again next spring. Maybe we can give it another shot towards the end of the summer, but my guess is she won't grow THAT much taller over a single summer.

Awesome Weekend

2010-05-10T21:08:00.004-05:00

Jam packed, super busy, great weekend. Friday night, relaxed and watched Sherlock Homes. Saturday afternoon, got a babysitter and saw Iron Man 2. (Robert Downey Jr. weekend?) Saturday night, had good friends and thier three kids over for dinner. Sunday morning, made Mother's day breakfast, followed by a 13 mile run. Sunday afternoon, did a Zoo trip with the girls. Sunday night, got a last-minute dinner invite over at Grandma Gayle's!!

Whewww! It was non-stop and somehow I even took care of waking up with Casey during the night all weekend so Andrea could catch up on some quality sleep. I was a tad tired on Sunday night, but felt it was all so worth it.

Speaking of Casey, I thought I'd do a little video blog update on her. As I mentioned, we had a babysitter for her on Saturday and it went well. We may be over the worst parts of seperation anxiety! This is super exciting. In other news, Casey is learning a little sign language already, which is just awesome. She is also very close to walking, and I bet she will be going full speed within another month. It's hard to believe that she is already going to be 1 in just two short weeks.

Casey signs "monkey", which is sorta odd for a first sign.

Casey rocking out to B.o.B. with a cameo by Megan, and then some signing at the end.

And last but not least, Casey taking some of her first steps.

Confession Time

2010-05-05T21:44:00.003-05:00

It's been a hard decision, but I think I need to come clean. I've been trying to hide it for awhile, and struggling with it, so it's time to just get it out in the open: I like all the stupid Kesha songs I hear on the radio.

There, I said it. Does it make me a horribly sick person? Maybe... but the songs are just so stupidly funny and completely catchy that I simply can't help myself. Clearly she has no talent what so ever, but the songs are just addicting. Think of me what you will, but it's the sad truth! I love the end of the one song where she goes "I like your beard". It's like she's talking just to me!

Okay, on a more serious note, I can't believe we are already into May. May for crying out loud! The year is almost half over and I don't even remember how it started! I'm enjoying the nicer weather, and so is Megan. She spends more time outdoors than inside these days, and that's a good thing. Casey is SO close to walking... I think she might be walking before her first birthday in 3 weeks.

I've been wanting to get some more "In-Depth" posts up, like I did with running and work. The next two subjects are going to be weight and parenting. Both tough subjects, but I think it would do me some good to get my ideas out. Look for those later this month.

So speaking of music - another new cheesy song on the radio that I currently like:

B.o.B - Nothin' On You ft. Bruno Mars [Official Video]

You can make fun of me if you want. It's okay. :-)

And on the note of parenting, I should go now and attempt to work on one of my biggest issues as of late: getting Megan to bed at a decent time. Wish me luck!

Do It Yourself

2010-04-30T20:04:00.002-05:00

In the end, my washing machine was fixed, and it was free. But once again, I found myself having to get it taken care of myself. Yes, the sales guy at Home Depot was trying to help but ultimately he was useless. He called GE a few times, and said they would take care of me, but he never bothered to either give me the extension of a GE customer service rep or a case number. All he could give me was a name. So in the end, after calling GE multiple times, I finally just said "Screw this" and pleaded my case to the next representative I got. She agreed to help me and we had a service guy out on Thursday and he fixed the washer for free. So Linzy, call rep from GE, thanks for helping me out!

I've known for quite sometime, that my inability to ask for help is one of my bigger character flaws. I recently confessed to a friend of mine how I find it hard to have faith in other people. I think that might be part of why I find myself drawn to friendships with people with strong religious convictions. A small part of me likes to think they are more honest or trust worthy. Sadly, even that is a form of profiling.

The overarching problem is that my pessimistic personality spills over into my view of what might motivate other people. I operate under this assumption that most people only either care about themselves, only do things motivated in self interest, and if push came to shove, will always look out for their own self interests first.

A lot of my decisions are based on the assumption that I have no one to rely on but myself. It's sorta like social security. In my mind, it doesn't even exist. I assume that when I retire, the only money I'll have to pay for the rest of my life will be the money that I earned and saved. That might be an extreme example, but it illustrates my point.

The reason I consider this such a character flaw, is not so much the "no one would ever help me if I needed it" attitude that I have, but more so, the indirect side effect of not being able to rely on other people. It also means it's very hard to look to others for help in other areas such as emotional or yes, maybe even spiritual support. (and before you get too excited, I'm refering more to the "values and meanings by which people live" type of spirituality, not religion per-say)

I also assume that eventually I'm going to have to ask for help. At some point in my life, I'll need support of one kind or another. And maybe by then I'll get past my inability to rely on others for good. In the meantime, I'll keep hanging up on random people that call my house because I just assume they want something from me. I'm sure someday I'll hang up on someone calling to tell me I just won a million dollars.

Weekend of Free Stuff

2010-04-26T21:21:00.004-05:00

At first I planned on blogging about the horrible weather conditions on Saturday morning, how cold and miserable I was during my race, or how the rain put a dent in my otherwise decent DVD selling later in the day. Instead, I'm going to shift gears and actually talk about something positive! Me? Positive? No way!

First off is my camera problem. About 3 weeks ago my brand new camera went kaput. I had just bought it at the beginning of October! I blamed Megan because it stopped working one evening after she brought it up to me from downstairs. Added to that was the fact that the last thing the camera recorded was a series of 16 very suspicious movie clips recorded by Megan (when no one else was around).

Andrea brought the camera into Best Buy, and the Geek Squad sent it off to Cannon since it was still under the 1 year manufacture warranty. I get an email from the Geek Squad after a few weeks, and long story short, they give me a brand new camera. But here's the best part. The model I bought (A1100 IS) is no longer available. So instead, I get a free upgrade to the next model in the PowerShot line, the A3100 IS! It's an even better camera then I had, and it's brand new!

Well, that got my day off to an awesome start. But then, later that afternoon, Andrea calls me downstairs because the washing machine is going nuts. My limited handy man skills tell me it's pretty messed up (the inner portion is just sitting completely off center). This washer is ALSO almost brand new, replaced just last April! However, we were a few weeks past the 1 year warranty so I was worried this time. I decided my best shot was to go to Home Depot (where we bought it) in person and see if I could work some magic. I always seem to have better luck showing up in person.

So what happens? After walking around the store for awhile without finding any good assistance, I decide to swing by Appliances one more time. By pure blind luck I just so happen to run into the very same salesperson that originally sold me the washer. (only now he is working in Flooring). I stopped, we chatted, and another long story short - he got on the phone with GE today and informed me that they are going to be able to help us out, despite being past the official year warranty. Granted the washer isn't fixed yet, but I have faith it will be by the end of the week, again, for free!

Sadly, as the karmic laws of the universe must always prevail, once again when good things happen to me, it means my brother is getting shit on. You see, it's been clear to me for a long time that my brother and I are on opposite sides of some cosmic scale that has to remain in balance at all times. When good things happen to me, bad things happen to him (trust me, this is no joke). So while I was enjoying all this free stuff, my brothers wife was in the emergency room, with a follow up emergency surgery. She is okay now and back home, but I'm sure they will be looking at a few thousand dollars in medical expenses. Why is life so unfair like that?

Day off?

2010-04-23T20:41:00.002-05:00

I took the day off work today, for no other reason then Andrea telling me "It's about damn time you took a day off!" Am I working too much? Maybe. Being off today just reminded me once again that I still have the easier job between me and Andrea. I'm friggen beat!

We started off the morning with a trip to the YMCA, where I did a quick 5 miler on the treadmill. Casey did "okay" this time - she cried like CRAZY when we dropped her off at the kids stuff area, but they never called Andrea down to pick her up and by the time we came back she was mostly calm.

After that Megan and I spent an hour at a park, went out for lunch, drove into Minneapolis to pick up my race packet for tomorrows race. Came home, played outside for a few hours, had dinner, more time outside, and blam all of a sudden it's 9pm and I am tired as hell. How on earth does Andrea do this every day all week?

So yeah, tomorrow I have my first race of the year, and the 4th time I will be doing the Get in Gear 10k - the first race I ever ran. The weather looks like it's going to be absolutely horrible, cold and raining. Gotta love it. In the 4 years I've done this race, the weather has only been marginally good once.

The bad weather tomorrow is going to be a double slap in the face. You see, around my place they are having a HUGE neighborhood garage sale. It's a yearly thing, and everyone gets involved. You can find some amazing deals and tons of stuff for kids. Normally it wouldn't bother me too much that the rain is going to ruin the garage sales, but I decided at the last minute to put in a ton of work to sort and arrange my DVD collection in hopes of selling some off. Now it looks like I might not be able to sell any due to the weather. My neighbor at least bought a few already.

I'll report more later on the results of the run, the crappy weather, and my attempt to make a few bucks selling DVDs.

Separation Anxiety

2010-04-17T17:21:00.005-05:00

As Casey nears the 11 month mark, we are struggling with some serious separation anxiety. I can't remember when it started, but it must have been almost 2 months ago now. I saw it develop on our Monday night date nights. For the last 2 months, every Monday night Andrea and I were going to a marriage course, "Date Night with a Purpose" it was called. It included private candle lit dinners for two (catered by Roasted Pear!) each night followed by a short informative talk. There was also babysitting provided.

Each night was very hard on Casey, and she would instantly start crying as soon as we dropped her off. It would last for a good 20-30 minutes. A few nights we ended up leaving early to just go comfort her. It's also putting a damper on Andrea's opportunities to go to the YMCA. She can hardly drop Casey off before they are calling her back down because the YMCA staff can't comfort her.

And if that wasn't bad enough, we can't even leave her with Grandma either! This all adds up to some rough times ahead. Mostly it's going to get old fast if Andrea and I can't find time to spend together, do a date night, or even go to a movie together. This weekend I want to see Kick-Ass so badly, but I'll have to go see a 10:30pm showing just so I can see it by myself.

With Megan, it was never this bad at all. Maybe she might whine a little bit, but she could quickly get engaged with something, anything, by whoever it was that was watching her. With Casey it is much worse, we can hardly leave the room. At night when I get home from work, she just clings and clings to me all night until bed time.

I know it should pass, but man I hope it doesn't last much more than another month or two. If it does, I might have to take drastic measures and do things to help get her over it, such as leaving Casey with Grandma for 15 minute periods, working up to an hour, to basically teach her it's going to be okay.

Anyway, here is a very cute video update from a few weeks ago. Show casing the great singing voice on Andrea!

Work: In-Depth

2010-04-13T21:20:00.005-05:00

Ahhh, the ultimate taboo subject. For awhile I've been wanting to give an update on work status, but always chicken out at the last second. I figure it's about time to let it all hang out, what the hell!

I could be working right now. In fact, I just got done doing about 20 mins of misc. stuff. At the core, that's the gist of the problem. I've hinted a few times at the way work is invading my thoughts but it's getting pretty bad. The question is why?

I work on some decently fun software. It's got enough complexity as to be challenging, but not too much as to be completely unmanageable. The core of the application was written in the early 2000's and since then, has never gone through any type of rearchitecture. Piece after piece, feature after feature, bolted on in any way it could be. In the end, the app still functions, looks pretty much the exact same as it did 10 years ago, and is just insanely complicated. (for reference, I started in June 2006)

In 2009, I started up the idea of starting fresh. Rebuilding the software from the ground up using latest technologies, techniques, and platforms. This wasn't an original idea by any stretch of the means. It's just that all the previous people to push the idea had either left the company or were too busy dealing with other things. Those facts, combined with the particular position I am in, made it the obvious choice that I needed to be the next to attempt to push for it.

So for a few months, I started pushing. Trying to gain momentum with some of the engineers at levels above me. It didn't seem to take off. The cost of such an effort didn't seem to have an ROI (return on investment). The software works... if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Shortly after that, I went out on leave while Casey was born and when I came back the momentum had completely died. I chucked my idea as simply a bad idea and went back to the normal daily grind.

Then earlier this year, one of the engineers who helped build the original software started up the effort again, specifically calling me in to help, and in a lot of ways, shutting out all the "naysayers". He could see the cliff we are hanging off, and how badly we need to rework parts of the software. So once again, I decided to give it my all. I've determined the cheapest possible solution, wrote up an entire high level scope document, and prototyped the entire damn application.

Why? Because I care about this software? Because I think it will be that much better? No. For two reasons. First, it would be a lot more fun to work in the latest technologies, and second, because it would be fun to hear the "Wow" factor if it ever actually happened and got released. Oh, I suppose the third reason would also be money. I wouldn't put this much effort in if I didn't honestly think it might actually allow us to retain and get new customers, which in return results in better profit sharing and ideally, better raises.

Did I mention I don't get paid enough for the effort I put in?

4 Year Old Wisdom

2010-04-10T20:16:00.004-05:00

I had wanted to get another in-depth post up this week, but the time just wasn't there. Instead I'll switch gears and post some words of wisdom from Megan.

Last night my neighbor mentioned how he was watching the original Star Wars with his kids for the first time. I thought maybe Megan would enjoy watching them, so we headed home and I popped the movie in. As it started, I tried to explain to Megan who the "good guys" and "bad guys" were, to give her a frame of reference. After about 20 minutes into the movie, she just turns to me and says:

Bad guys are just a part of life.

I couldn't agree with her more.

Today Megan and I were on our way to the grocery store, and she had another wonderful quote. Just out of the blue, she goes:

I wish we had a flying car.

Don't we all?

We didn't actually have any plans this weekend, so today we just picked things at random. We decide to start off the afternoon at the Mall of America. Megan is just over 42' inches now, which means she can go on almost all the rides at the MOA. So for the first time ever, I shelled out some money so we could go on some rides together. What I didn't know - is that if you have a child just above 42 inches, some of the rides require that they have a chaperone. But here is the cool part - the chaperone rides free! How cool is that?

We started off on the Ferris Wheel, which didn't allow a free chaperone. That was a rip off, so then we moved on to the Merry-Go-Round, which rocked. But from there... Megan wanted to do the "Orange Crush" roller coaster. This ride only needed the rider to be 42' inches, so being the insane Dad that I am, I said what the hell! Either she will love it or be permanently scarred for life.

This ride qualifies as a "real" roller coaster, despite no huge drops or anything. It is fast and the 3 spin turns are really fast. After the first 10 seconds of the ride and I got worried, but then all of a sudden Megan starts cheering and laughing and just having the time of her life. After we got off, she begged me to go again. Damn straight we did it again! It was awesome!

Here is a video from someone riding this coaster. It should give an idea of how fast this was.

Kind of ironic to find this video on youtube, but not at all if you were Megan. You see, just a few nights ago she turned to me and said:

Everything is on youtube.

How correct she is!

Running: In-Depth

2010-04-07T17:17:00.003-05:00

You might have noticed my updated side-bar. I haven't used the running web site linked to my blog, Buckeye Outdoors, since last November. Since then, they have updated the web site to allow direct linking to my Garmin running watch. Cool stuff!

I've done 4 runs since the weather turned nice, and (fingers crossed), so far so well. My foot isn't 100% but it isn't painful or getting any worse either. Most days, I don't even notice the plantars. I'm going to take this as a good sign that I can keep it up.

On Saturday, I ran my first "long" run of the year. It just barely made the double digits, but that's my qualification for a long run. Although I felt good for most of the run, I was pretty beat by the end of it. Interestingly, I ended up being more worried about my heart rate then my bum foot. An AVR of 175 with a max of 188 was much higher then I'd want for that particular pace.

Thankfully, the next run right after that, at the same pace but a slightly different time of day was better. AHR of 158, and although I only did 6.65 miles, my heart rate profile was much closer to what I would expect for that pace. This was encouraging for my goals this years.

Yes, despite my injury and woah-is-me attitude, I have running goals for this year, just like I did last year. Last year I had a goal of running 1,500 miles. This is a goal I never talked about or even mentioned on my blog. In fact, there is only one person I ever told this goal to. This year is no different. I have running goals, and they are once again sekret.

Like almost all my goals, I have fears. Fears I won't be able to achieve them, fears of failure. In some ways, I think it is these fears that keep my goals sekret. It's better to fail silently, than to admit failure. My first four runs this year have my attitude slightly more positive, and as long as my injury doesn't get any worse, I think I'll be able to achieve my goals for this year. Time will tell.

Crampons

2010-04-02T20:34:00.007-05:00

Any geek that has ever played Dungeons & Dragons knows what crampons are. Why? Because they are always available for purchase in the equipment list, and someone always asks, "What are crampons?" Friday I was on the elliptical watching my new favorite show: Cash Cab. A game show where random people in a taxi cab are asked semi-easy trivia questions. At the end, if you make it, you can go double or nothing. The answer to the final question was "crampons", and I knew the answer but the 3 guys in the cab didn't. Obviously they had never played Dungeons & Dragons.

Every single day, from Thursday to today, I tried to sit down and blog. And every single day, 5 minutes into it, something would need my attention. Something isn't adding up because usually I could get some time to myself each night either playing video games or reading, or something.

This week I'm going to start putting in a little more blog effort and post in depth about recent on-goings, from finishing a 20 year book saga to my running, work, and all the rest. For now, since I once again have sat down to blog with only 20 spare minutes, I will keep this post short.

This weekend was great overall, awesome weather. Got a run in on Saturday (check out the new running side-bar). Also went to see Clash of the Titans with my brother Saturday night. It was fun, but nothing spectacular. I enjoyed it.

Today we drove down to New Ulm and visited the in-laws for Easter Sunday. I ate entirely too much candy today, so good thing I'm starting running again. Been floating in the upper 180s, reaching 190 the last 2 months. Time to put a stop to that and get back down to an even 180 for the running season.

Well, I hear the oven beeping so dinner is ready. Gotta jet, but expect more posts this week then the usual once a week.

Poker Night Success

2010-03-28T10:57:00.004-05:00

Party last night was an awesome time. 8 people total, which worked out perfect for the amount of space, chips, and everything else. The funny part is that the group of people just ended up being my standard AD&D group of friends plus 2 other friends. And a lot of us hadn't even seen each other in some time, so it was great to just socialize for awhile using poker as the excuse. Had some college hockey playing in the background, pizza, snacks and good times.

We started the first hand going over the rules and trying to emphasize the first few hands being "practice", but with real betting. What happened next was hilarious. Now, keep in mind, technically speaking, this is some low stakes poker. Betting starts out with white chips, that from a dollar value, are .02 cents a piece. Yes, 2 pennies. But what happens? A few people have really good hands and all of a sudden people are throwing around their highest value chips ($2 dollar chips). Off the first hand, one person basically took 2 people down half their chips. So much for "practice" hands!

First person went out shortly after 7pm, and the game lasted until just before 11:30pm. Some highlights include one guy getting pocket Aces TWICE in a row. The odds of getting dealt pocket Aces is around 220 to 1, and this guy got it twice! I got pocket aces once, but didn't show them (won the hand without being called). The highest hands all night were full houses, no 4-of-a-kinds all night. There were a quite a few number of Full Houses though, including a hand where two guys both had full houses. One had 7s over 6s and the other had 6s over 7s!

In the end, I made it to the final two, but I was severely short stacked. I won a solid all-in with 3 10's when my opponent had 2 pair 10s and Jacks. But he had so many chips that he could just keep bleeding me. I tried a few bully moves that didn't work out. Despite all that, as it got down to the end, he goes blind all-in against me (all-in without looking at his first 2 cards). I had Ace & 2 of spades, a solid opener. So I said what the hell and called. He flips his cards over, 10-4 off suit. I'm clearly ahead at this point. Flop comes up... 10-4-Ace. So now he has 2 pair and I have a pair of aces, but I'd need a 2 or Ace to come up to win. What happens? Another 10 or 4, I honestly don't remember. Point is, he gets a friggen Full House off a blind all-in! Crazy. So I came in second, but had a great time.

Everyone had so much fun, that I might even be motivated to do one more this year, in late fall before the winter sets in.

There we go

2010-03-23T22:00:00.002-05:00

Could this week be the true start to spring weather? Sure hope so. I took the chance this weekend to try my first outdoor run of the year and only my 3rd run since Feb 1st (the other 2 being short treadmill runs when the ellipticals were full). The run went well, although turned out to be a bit colder then I realized. 7.75 miles at a decent pace. In the end, my foot felt no better or worse, so... More outdoor runs to follow, probably starting with this weekend. Fingers crossed that no "new" pain develops.

Our colds are still kicking our ass, which is dragging me down a bit this week. It would be nice to have everyone healthy again by this weekend. Casey has it the worst, simply because there isn't anything she can do. It's still hard for her to get a good nights sleep, so she is extra moody and tired (which in turn, makes the rest of us tired). I'm thinking we should be free and clear within a week. Again, fingers crossed.

I'm looking forward to this weekend, as I'm hosting a poker night that I planned out a few months in advance. Small, myself and maybe 5-6 others. Small stakes, nothing huge, but it should be fun to just get together for a guys night. I did a poker night in both 2005 and 2006, and then sorta just stopped doing it for 3 years. Figured it's about damn time to start it up again, so bring on the 3rd "not-really-annual" Poker Night!

From Tired to Busy

2010-03-18T21:30:00.007-05:00

Being overly tired was the worst thing to happen leading into the day light savings time weekend. On top of that, we had a full weekend of travel, spending time with family, and all sorts of stuff that just kept us going all weekend. In the end, no one adjusted very well to the time change and it's been dragging on everyone all week.

I think I'm finally recovered today, since I got to sleep in until 8am. I was up with Casey a few times during the night, but nothing too bad. Me and the girls all have colds right now. Andrea has avoided it so far, so she might be in the clear. The rest of us are just miserable. I'm hoping this is the last round of colds we get for awhile as we lead into spring.

Speaking of spring, the girls are definitely enjoying more time out side lately. You quickly forget how "new" everything is to a 10 month old. Stuff outside to see, touch and smell are all still new to her. To Casey, the coolest thing in the world is to just hold her near a tree branch so she can grab it.

Meanwhile, Megan asks me pretty much every other time we go outside if she can take her training wheels off! She's not quite ready for that, but our neighbors daughter is a year older than Megan and she might get this off this summer. So of course, Megan wants the same. So typical!

Here's a recent video of Casey practicing walking with assistance outside.

Tired

2010-03-11T20:27:00.002-06:00

No other words come to mind right now. I'm seriously worn down. If I put my head on a pillow right now I think I'd pass out before I closed my eyes. So why am I blogging? Cause Megan took a huge nap tonight and isn't remotely tired. Ah well. I should stop getting to work at 6am, might help.

This weekend was pretty tough driving around, seeing runners everywhere I looked. I was feening pretty hard to get out there. My foot condition hasn't changed significantly over the last 5 weeks of no running. If anything, it maybe feels slightly better. I have no real pain anymore unless I really crank on the stretching. I'm probably going to end up at the foot doctor again in a few weeks and discuss any other options. It might just be a giant waste of time and money, but I need something. One way or another I'm going to start running outside again in early to mid April.

Once I start running again, I see 3 possible outcomes. I'm trying to mentally prepare for the worst of those, but it's not coming easy. The best possible outcome of course is that running outdoors again with orthopedic shoe inserts will somehow magically readjust my foot and help it heal and go back to normal. Odds of that happening? I'm going to say less than 10%. Second outcome is that the pain I have now just stays more or less the same. I mean, even at the "peak" it never actually hurt. It was just a minor annoyance, mostly in the morning (which is a lot better thanks to the night splint). The last outcome, and most likely outcome, is that running again aggravates it and results in worse pain.

Of all the things I wanted to do this year, quitting running for good was not one of them. But if after I start running again, the pain gets worse, I'm not sure what other options I would have. The thought of being done running for good is not something I can swallow right now. So I'm just going to have to take one day at a time and see how this spring goes.

Back on Track

2010-03-07T20:29:00.002-06:00

Once again find myself breaking my self imposed rule of at least 1 blog post a week. Last week I just couldn't find the time, despite being fascinated reading through posts by Sunnybrook Farm. Considering how much I whine about finding a way out of a system I hate, I only joke about dropping off the grid. Reading about someone that actually did it was cool.

The lack of posts last week came mostly from work. I've been pouring WAY too much into it the last month or so. One night this week, Andrea looked at me and asked, "What are you thinking about?" And I said, "I'm thinking about how pissed off I am that I can't stop thinking about work."

The opportunity to bring the project that I work on out of the 90s and into the latest decade has presented itself again. I've mentioned this over half a year ago and I'm not sure this time will be any different. I've jokingly referred to it as "Project Unobtainium", but it isn't too far from the truth. No matter how cool I can make something look or how many value statements I can come up with, some senior executive that doesn't know what Windows 7 is, won't understand why it might be a good idea to re-architect our software for that platform. But I figure I'll give it one more shot, and when the competition begins to steamroll us, I can at least say I gave it my best shot, instead of just "I told you so."

Interesting Turn

2010-02-27T13:00:00.004-06:00

Fun to have people reading and my blog being motivated to share opinions. Almost motivates me to just post non stop about hot button topics like religion all the time. Almost.

I do want to expose my kids to as many different opinions and world views as I possibly can, so they can figure out for themselves (in the long run) what works for them. And the reason I want to do that is because, I don't think any particular world view is any more correct then the next. My choice to be atheist is just as valid as my friends choices for religion. Neither is the right choice or the wrong choice, they are just personal preferences. The important thing is to figure out for yourself what "fits" for you.

And that's the main reason I find it SO utterly difficult to participate in any formal organized gathering of any religious type. Because usually (not always), that group of people want you to think just like them. And if you don't, you're labelled as "wrong". Whether it's a Christian church wanting to convert you to a belief in god, or a liberal Unitarian church where everyone bashes conservatives and republicans. Either group comes with preconceived notions of who is right and wrong and what beliefs are right and wrong.

Which brings us right back to my subjective view of life and truth. Something that is hard to describe, but it is central to almost all my beliefs. I profess my love of the classic existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, and how reading his essays was the first time in my life, I ever read something about a world view that "fit" for me. Where for the first time in my life, I said "Wow, this is exactly how I've come to view the world.".

Yet still, despite that, there is a small part of me that wonders. Is subjective truth just a way to live your entire life without taking a particular stand on a subject?

Target Audience

2010-02-22T21:01:00.002-06:00

I'm usually pretty perceptive of changes in my normal routine. For as long as the "Followers" feature became available, I've had 3 followers. The 3 blog links on my blog roll. All of a sudden today I have 10 followers! (and I lost one of my original 3!) Oh, I must be getting famous.

Has my recent post on religion grabbed people? Should I do a full month of blogging about "Why Shawn is Atheist" or "How I think I developed morals without religion"? It's funny how much feedback I got on my recent post. Thanks to those that left comments. My Mom says to me, "The things you say amaze me." She's either amazed at what I say or I'm simply crazy. My brother tells me I get him "fired up". But if what I say gets people worked up one way or another, I must be on to something. Honestly though, I'm not really on to anything. I just enjoy being an instigator of thought.

And in the meantime, I'll try not to let the possibility that more than 3 people read my blog effect the way I do business around here.

Rest for the Wicked

2010-02-18T19:26:00.004-06:00

Tonight Andrea and I talked about one of those hard topics. Religion. More specifically, teaching religion. For some families, it's not even a question, let alone a hard one. You are given a belief structure from your parents in whatever religion they are a part of and then choose to accept or reject it.

For whatever reason, I don't feel I was ever "taught" religion, or in a more broader sense, taught how to figure out my place in the world/universe/whatever you want to call it. My thought is that religion provides answers for people to a lot of those hard to answer questions. Why am I here, what is my purpose, what happens when I die, etc etc. But I honestly don't know if that is the case, not being a part of any religion. Maybe it just gives a framework for finding answers to those questions but still leaves the actual answering up the individual.

But none of that is the point. The point here is I want to arm my daughters with at least some skills that give them a starting point to find those answers for themselves. The question is, what is the best way to go about doing that? Would taking them to a specific religion church do that? Or would trying to expose them to lots of different religions in some way be better? Either option seems tough.

I know the one thing I can't do is lie to them about my own beliefs, and that's maybe the hardest part. Being atheist is a tough proposition in it's own right. Trying to get someone to understand my belief structure, and how it is possible to be atheist and still "care" about things, life, other people, and still strive to be a "good" person, is not easy. On top of that, there are all these studies out there that show religions people tend to be happier or healthier or that church-going kids have better GPAs. Sadly, neither of these are motivators for me but they do at least force me to ask myself, what is best for my girls?

8 days between posts!

2010-02-13T09:03:00.004-06:00

Epic fail! This week was weird, and I didn't deliver on my promise of pictures from the Apple Valley Midwinter fest. I ended up going to work every other day this week, which sorta made the week fly by. I was working from home on Tuesday because I didn't feel like getting trapped in 3 feet snow drifts in my driveway. Thursday I had the day off so we could get some family pictures taken and so Andrea could get our taxes done and go to Megan's conferences.

Foot update: Still not 100% healed, but definitely better. Random pain throughout the day is very rare, and it usually doesn't hurt unless I really stretch and push/massage the area forcefully. I'm still hopeful for late March.

Anyway, not much else to report this week so here are the pictures and videos from Midwinter fest, as promised. First up, Megan got a cool balloon bracelet.

Everyone at the ice sculpture, and just Megan with a better shot of the finished product.

501st Post

2010-02-05T19:58:00.004-06:00

Didn't even realize it, but happened to glance at my post count tonight. I hit 500 posts, with today being 501. Not bad for 5 1/2 years of blogging. When I started this little adventure I didn't think I would last this long. I've come SO close to quitting many times. But in the end I always come back because quite frankly, for whatever reason, blogging can be very therapeutic for me. It's a place to come and bitch and moan without burdening anyone with my worries. The side effect of course is that sometimes my blog shows only the negative side of me, but I try my best to balance it out.

Foot update: Got the night splint this week and I've worn it twice now. It's not bad, and it definitely helps with the morning pain. I don't know if it is going to be a miracle cure, but I have hopes. In most studies, it helps 70-80% of the time. Even if it does, it's going to be a long healing process. I'm doing elliptical for now, but will see how that goes. It feels like it's low impact, but it's hard to tell.

Not much else going on really. Work is still just work. Still trying to make a difference, because why not? It's more fun to try and make a difference and then be forced not to, rather then just straight up not even try. Sure the outcome is going to be the same, but at least that way I can put the blame on some other abstract concept like "the business" making bad decisions.

The girls are doing fine, and Megan starts a new preschool program on Monday. It's a "Playschool" program at the near by Eastview high school. It's a great program, 3 days a week. She will do that in addition to normal ECFE 2 days a week, so she will be a busy girl!

Tomorrow we are doing the Apple Valley Mid-Winter Fest which we try to do every year. It's mostly just so that Megan can do the inflatable jumpers, but maybe this year she would have the patience for mini golf. I'll try and snap a few pictures and get them up this weekend.

Difficult Decision

2010-02-01T19:46:00.003-06:00

I've come to a very difficult conclusion. I know it's for the better and hopefully the best for my long term goals, but that doesn't make it any easier. What is that decision you ask? I'm done running... for now.

You may remember my off hand comment about Plantar Fasciitis a few weeks ago. Well, I took my week off running, did even more research, and even visited a podiatrist. I've decided I have full blown plantars, and that I need to treat it before it gets worse.

The thing that makes plantars such a horrible injury, is that it is a silent killer. It doesn't hurt THAT much, usually only early in the morning. Stretching it or running on it can actually make it feel better. But running on it is a false approach, because you are doing more harm. I've read more than a few accounts of people who "ran through" a plantars injury only to be completely debilitated later.

The other horrible aspect of plantars, is that there is no easy cure. What worked for one person doesn't work for the next and vice versa. I was even at a running store looking for night splints and the store clerk mentioned how he had plantars once. He says to me, "You basically have to throw every treatment at it. What worked for me was...."

At the core, there are the 3 basic things: rest, icing and stretching. In addition to the basics, I'm wearing orthopedic shoe inserts at all times. One of the most important rules is to never go barefoot, even at home. I'm going to do a week of anti-inflammatory starting soon (tomorrow?) I've also ordered a "night splint" online (couldn't find one in a local store).

The idea behind the splint is that during the night, your foot rests in an extended manner, allowing your plantar fascia to constrict. Then upon waking, you take your first step out of bed and BAM, tear it apart and start the cycle of healing/tearing all over again. The night splint keeps the muscle flexed, allowing it to heal better over night and then be ready to go in the morning.

I need to be icing more, which I will probably start more of this week. I think I'll start icing at work too, where I have more time to just sit. If I don't see noticeable change within 4 weeks, I'll head back to the podiatrist and consider more drastic measures such as professional message therapy or ultrasound cortisone cream. Hopefully it doesn't come to that. I am absolutely committed to getting this taken care of over the next 8-12 weeks. One thing is for sure, no matter what, I will never run on a treadmill again, which I feel is the main reason I suffered this injury. (although, stupid use of a treadmill is also to blame)

That was quick

2010-01-28T18:39:00.005-06:00

As this week and month both come to a close, I'm reminded once again how fast it all seems to be flying by. Casey is 8 months old and is going to be walking soon. Megan is 4 going on 13. Every now and then she just sighs, looks up at me, rests her head in her hands and says, "It's hard to be a girl sometimes." It breaks my heart, but it is oh so cute. Just you wait!

The funny thing is, I predicted this back in July of last year. I knew things would start to speed up, and sure enough, they are. The scary thing is, recently I've been wondering if the routine is starting to get to me.

Right about now, I could go off on the deep end, like I often do. Like how lately I've been wondering if the systems we are a part of, are created by us on purpose. Are the concepts of work, making money, and all the rest a way of controlling ourselves? I mean, think of the alternatives?

What if people didn't need to work for a living. What if everything you ever needed to "survive" (food, clothes, shelter) for you're entire life was immediately provided the day you were born. What then? Would the world be a better place or a worse one?

After doing "work" that is meaningless for so long, it hardly even bothers me anymore. I can think back to the early years and remember how hard it was. I'd leave work going, "Is this it?" Unless something major occurs or some insane self employment opportunity/idea hits me out of no where (about as likely as winning the lotto), I'll probably be working at some random company doing some random computer/programming related thing for the rest of my career. I'll always be overworked, underpaid, and under appreciated for my efforts. Odds are high that I'll always be a grunt, or at best, the highest of the grunts. (which probably just amounts to more pressure, higher work load, and bigger expectations than the other grunts)

Can I deal with that? Yeah, probably. The problem is, I'm not 100% sure what the price is going to be. I get caught up in thinking what I do is hard or that I'm so much better at it, when in reality, a trained monkey can do what I do. I need to remind myself that more often, and remember that what goes on at work, good, bad, or whatever, will always be meaningless. And that's okay. Because work isn't where I find meaning.

Video Day

2010-01-23T11:48:00.004-06:00

I haven't got any pictures or videos up since Christmas, so I figured it was about time. Casey has really started getting around this last month, climbing up on things, etc. It's hard to say if she will be walking before 1 year, maybe. Not much new on the Megan front, although she has started up swimming lessons again and is doing well. Swimming is something she definitely just enjoys, so we will probably keep that going.

Today is a day of errands and misc stuff, with a dinner date tonight with another couple. We are heading out to eat at Crave, at the Mall of America. I'm hoping our experience is not quite the same as Steve's, I wouldn't mind a mildly bad experience that included a free meal.

Anyway, on to the videos! First up, Megan and Casey speak into the Microphone:

And the second video, from a few nights ago. I was just changing Casey's diaper and she was just soooo giggly. I had to capture it.

Ahhh the sound of laughing babies. Maybe Casey will become an Internet craze and get 95 million hits like that one video. If the video doesn't put a smile on your face, I don't think anything could!

The Hard Questions

2010-01-19T20:10:00.003-06:00

Megan is at the age where she asks a lot of questions. I'm never quite sure what depth of answer to give to her. On the one side, I don't want to go into so much detail that she stops listening and goes "oh". On the other, I don't want to over simplify things. So the other day when I was reading the newspaper article about Haiti, and Megan started asking questions, I decided to give her the most honest answers I could, shying away from actually mentioning death, dead people, etc. That ended up in a long series of questions, each more detailed then the next. Why did they get hurt? Who got hurt? Why does the earth shake? Who's going to help them? Why do they need water?

Those interactions are always tricky, because you never know what Megan might latch on to. For example, recently when one of my Mom's cat's died, I explained to Megan how Pepper died because he was old. This was followed by a week long asking of "Where is Pepper?" and "But I didn't want Pepper to die!" (with some sad crying as well).

Tonight was another one that has come up a few times, maybe a half dozen times total. Megan asked me, "Where is your Daddy?". That is a tough one. Tonight when she asked, I went with a new answer of "He is no longer with us." I don't think she caught on to what I meant by that, but I was just too afraid to use any form of the "D" word.

If I were to stop and think hard about the fact that my daughters will never know Papa Mike, it makes me pretty damn sad. That's probably why I try not to think about it. Hell, I even wish Andrea could have met him. Because despite his flaws, for he had his share, just like me, he was a kind, gentle, loving soul. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I'm sure he would have loved to be a Papa for three lovely girls after being a father of two unruly boys.

Maybe I'll have my Mom go through and collect some old pictures of Papa Mike and I'll get them scanned in for some permanent storage. And perhaps this year I'll try to share more stories of him with Megan next time the "hard" question comes up.

Little bit of everything

2010-01-17T20:29:00.002-06:00

Best words to describe this weekend. Lots of little fun stuff that added up to a decent weekend. Saturday I saw Avatar for the second time, and it was still just as good. I did pay more attention to the whole "Dances With Wolves" comparison that everyone seems so keen on mentioning, and I guess I get it. Did the natives win in that one?

Came home, grabbed Megan and went out for a treat at Cold Stone Creamery. We got inside and Megan yells out, "Look at all those flavors!" The two teenage workers just laughed saying it was the cutest thing they had ever heard. I was like, "What's the big deal? There IS a lot of flavors."

Sunday I got a run in and then enjoyed the Vikings game like most other people this weekend. It would be cool to see them win the division next week, but I'm not going to invest too much concern over it.

In other entertainment news, I've started reading Katherine Kerr novels again. This time, I only went as far back as the start of the final "Act", which is the last 4 books in the series. Originally, as each new "Act" came out, I would go back and re-read the entire series. The first book was published in 1986, and I found them shortly after that in high school, probably either 89' or 90'. The reason I started reading them again recently is that the final book, 15th in the series, was published last November. I recalled it was possibly due out in 2009, but never realized it came out.

It's kinda weird to look back and think I've been reading this book series for the last 20 years. There are plenty of good fantasy novels out there, and lots of great writers and series. For some reason, this is the one I stuck with. I'm excited to see the conclusion, and at the same time, very sad. In some ways, this series is what led me to reading others throughout the years. I might find it hard to go looking for something new once it's all done. By far, these are my favorite books of all time. Every time I read them they get better.

The Megan Factor

2010-01-11T20:35:00.003-06:00

Megan is a great kid. Most of the time, she is very well behaved. And by most of the time, I mean damn near 90% of the time or more. She struggles with the things most kids do her age: transitions (leaving something she is enjoying) and times when she is tired.

The hard part is that the "problem times" seem OVERLY difficult. When she has made up her mind to misbehave or not listen to us, she takes it to the N-th degree. At grocery stores it might be running away or throwing things out of the grocery cart. Or running away when leaving the YMCA. At home it's usually physical in nature (hitting/throwing). Being given a timeout just means more running away and hiding under tables. Telling her to stop doing something always just makes it worse. The word "Don't" might as well be "Do that some more." It's getting exhausting, for everyone. Andrea fears for her ability to take both girls out in public alone if she can't control Megan. I feel like I'm contributing to the problem because when faced with an out of control Megan, either in public or at home, I'll simply pick her up or physically remove her from the situation. That is not something Andrea can effectively do now as Megan is older and bigger.

The worst part about it all, is the constant wondering. Are we doing something wrong as parents? Is Megan just going through a "phase"? Should we be reacting differently to her outbursts? Does she need more discipline? Less discipline? Stricter timeouts? Should I not cave to her demands for a yogurt at 10pm because I know if she gets it, she will go to bed right after with a hug and a kiss good night? (and I can't even go into the alternative of if I were to say "No, it's bed time.") Is it possible maybe I just have a spoiled child? Am I too much of a people pleaser?

The constant self doubts are dragging on our family life to be certain. If there was any time in my life I needed serious advice, suggestions, or any thoughts from people who have been through the 4 year old stage, now would be that time. Post a comment, send me an email, or hell, god forbid, call me in person. I've even joined the 20th century, and have a cell phone now, I'll give you the number.

Running Year In Review

2010-01-06T16:59:00.009-06:00

Been awhile since I talked about my running, so I figured why not review the last year and do some standard bragging. My goal for 2009 was 1,500 miles. I sorta blew right by that, along with some crazy personal speed records. Let's take look at the last year by the numbers:

Total mileage:	1,858.77
Highest weekly mileage:	54.66 (7/8/2009)
Lowest weekly mileage:	25 (2/11/2009)
Average weekly mileage:	35.6
Average miles per run:	8.6
Longest single distance:	20.43
Longest time between runs:	3 days

Week by week mileage graph:

The 3 days between runs only happened once all year. Reason? Casey was born. There was nothing particularly special about my peak week, just a couple of 9 milers and a 16/12. My lowest week was due to something specific - that was the week I suffered a nasty glut injury from lifting. The funny thing is my good friend suffered the same injury later in the year just from pure running.

I didn't do as many races this year, partly because my company stopped paying for them. I did a total of 5 races this year (I think). All of them were personal records, but only one that I was truely proud of. It was my 10k in late July where I ran an average pace of under 6:50 minute miles. That was probably the hardest run I had ever done. I'm not quite sure I want to try and beat that this year.

So what did all this running get me? A minor Plantar Fasciitis injury, that I think I suffered the last few months due to running hills on the treadmill. It's not causing me serious pain or anything, but I've decide to take a solid week of running, and evaluate again. If the pain is still there, I might go another week after that. Might not seem like a big deal, but when my longest time between runs over the last year was 3 days, it's actually a very huge deal.

Maybe I'll use this as my excuse to finally take up some other forms of exersize, including lifting.

Belated Happy New Year

2010-01-03T17:36:00.003-06:00

Ahhh, the dreaded week between posts. My Mom was waiting for my annual whining about New Years resolutioners packing up the gyms and taking up my treadmills. I think I'll skip that this year, try to focus on the positive? (HA, ya right!)

Busy weekend leading up to the New Years with no time to post. Thursday we had my brother and another couple over for some games. For our second game, we went with Outburst 2, which was from sometime around 1990. Damn was that funny. They left around 10pm and I rang in the new years finishing up my second (and last) play through of Dragon Age: Origins.

New Years day we didn't do much, hit the YMCA in the morning and a few shopping trips in the afternoon. Most of the evening was preparing for our overnight in New Ulm, which was Saturday to Sunday. We dropped Megan off with Grandma Gayle Sat morning and brought Casey to spend the day and night with Grandma and Papa B. We got to see Avatar which completely blew my mind. I will definitely need to see it again in the theater.

So what's next? No rambling post about goals, no reflections on this last year. 2009 was full of tough challenges that I never brought to the blog. It had it's share of positive things as well, but it sucks the way my brain always wants to dwell on the wrong things.

I do know that 2010 is going to be a big year in a lot of different ways, and I'm excited for the coming months. I'm hoping most of the challenges of this year will be mostly forgotten by the time spring rolls around, and we will all be focusing on the positive again.

Christmas Survived

2009-12-27T17:50:00.006-06:00

For the most part. Two full days of eating horrible amounts of sweets, chocolate, and anything else I could get my hands on. Even today, I'm still on the tail end despite attempts to get back on the wagon. I got 20 miles of running in over the last 2 days so that at least helps, but it doesn't quite balance out the amount of food intake. I'll recover starting Monday with a 3-fer (3 days in a row of running) Tue/Wed/Thur leading up to New Years Eve.

Thursday we braved the weather and made it up to north Minneapolis in one piece. On the way home, I hit an exit ramp a little too fast and almost slid off the road. Friday everything was melting due to the high temps, and we made it over to my Mom's house easy. By Saturday, with everything frozen and after 2 days of travelling and food and everything else, we just weren't up to another whole day of travel down to New Ulm (sorry!). We'll be heading down there next Saturday anyway. Here are just a few pics and a video from Christmas.

Oh that chocolate fountain was evil. Someone even tried chocolate dipped cheese. No one was ambitious enough to try chocolate dipped meatball.

Casey getting into her first present opening.

Megan got a lovely new dress. She loves wearing a bunch of different costume dresses we have, but some are getting too small or too ragged.

And finally, although I got a lot of video footage from Christmas, this one is my favorite.

Grand Poobah

2009-12-23T13:54:00.002-06:00

I was describing a work situation to Andrea last night and used the term "Grand Poobah", only to immediately have Megan ask, "Whats a Poobah?" That was fun. Not so fun was when I later said "Fubar" and of course, got the same question.

It's 2pm on this lovely Wed afternoon. I just got back from an 11 mile run, Andrea is off seeing 2012, and both girls are napping. This is probably the absolute calmest moment I'll have for the next few days. I'll take it! I always have mixed feelings about time off around the holidays. Sure, I have a 5 day weekend, but it will feel like much less.

Today at least, is mostly laid back. I might head out here before the big snow storm comes and buy a few last minute groceries to get through the weekend. Then comes tomorrow and the "play it by ear". We are slated to visit family in North Mpls, which isn't that far. But depending on the state of the roads, it will feel worse.

Christmas day should be easy however, as it's just spending all day at my Mom's across town here. The big thing this year is that my Mom is going to setup her Chocolate Fountain she got a few years ago, for the very first time. It should be interesting, I think I'm going to get pictures.

Then Saturday, following Christmas, we are scheduled to head down to New Ulm and visit with Andrea's parents for the day. Again, that trip will hinge somewhat on the weather. I'll brave a certain amount, but we'll just have to see how things are looking that morning.

Too all the workers plowing streets over the next 72 hours, my hats off to you. Thanks for making the roads safer for all the holiday travellers and for giving up your time during the holidays.

Christmas Cometh

2009-12-19T12:42:00.003-06:00

My obsessive side wouldn't stop thinking about the filming that happened this week. I kept going over in my head what I wish I would have said, how I wish I would have prepared, and trying to remember what in the world I even did end up saying. I think the worst part is that I feel like I gave video games a bad rap, blaming them for my weight gain. They were a factor to be sure, but they were more my main excuse. At the time, it felt "better" to just lose myself in video games then to face the realities of my bad decisions.

Anyway, long story short, I finally got over myself yesterday and came to a realization. It's just something I did - I'm glad I did it, period. Whatever comes of it, and however it turns out, it is what it is. The bad news is, the actual commercial might not even be put on the interwebs for many months. They are releasing them a few at a time over the next few months. By the time it gets posted, I'll have completely forgot about it. One last thing - they let me take all the pictures I wanted. So here is a behind the scenes shot of where I was.

In other news, Casey offically started crawling this week! Very exiciting stuff. If it wasn't for the bad colds that both Megan and Casey have, this week would have been pretty awesome. Both girls are having hard time breathing at night, and with our luck, Andrea and I will catch it just before Christmas. I'm just hoping they are both a little more healthy in a week.

We also recently went to the eye doctor for Megan, and found that her vision is not improving as much as it needs to. I have a lot of worries about her long term vision, and it's hard to think of the possible negative outcomes. I told the doctor to give me some worst case scenarios last time, because I needed to hear it. Andrea had a GREAT idea recently, to switch to cloth patches instead of the adhesive kind. It's making a huge difference. Megan doesn't mind them, can put them on herself, and will wear them without any fight. We have high hopes these will help over the next year.

Lastly, just a great picture that we took this afternoon while playing around. Andrea's parents came up to visit today, and that was great. We'll be heading down to visit them the next couple weekends as well.

15 Minutes

2009-12-15T20:50:00.002-06:00

Where to start? I need to brain dump some of my thoughts about today, before I forget. I survived the day of filming, and that's the important part. I'm glad I did it, and to have had the experience, but I'm surprised at how hard it was. For someone who talks about himself all the time, you'd think it would have been easier. But being on the spot, trying to consolidate 2+ years of hard work, and how it was that I managed to do a complete 180 on my life wasn't easy at all.

Oddly enough, part of what made it so hard was just how long ago it all really happened. I mean, it's hard to think that I've actually stopped worrying about losing weight for nearly 3 years now. That's a lot of time to forget who and what I was all about when I was overweight. Maybe I should have gone back through some old blog posts and refreshed my memory!

Everyone said I did a great job, but I gotta be honest and say I didn't feel the same way. I was all over the place with what I was saying and overall, let my nervousness get the better of me. Almost like I was trying too hard instead of just letting my thoughts come freely. My only hope is the magical world of editing can mix things up and put it back together into a cohesive, positive message.

Because really, the message I DID want to get across was simple. If you feel like you want to change, don't wait. Change isn't going to be easy, because nothing worth doing ever is. But if you work hard, you can change, and in the end, it's all worth it. Thank you to everyone out there that helped inspire ME to change.

"Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty... I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

Unexpected Events

2009-12-12T16:46:00.005-06:00

I left off with a teaser for this weekend, mentioning an "interview". Let me start with bursting the bubble that it is not work related at all. Now that I've got that out of the way, on to the real "story".

A few months ago, on the way into work I heard a radio advertisement about the "Do Groove" campaign being put on by Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The ad said they were looking for people who had successfully managed to lose weight. They wanted people to log on to their web site and submit their story, how they did it, why they did it, etc. I figured, what the hell, I got a good story. Most anyone reading this blog already knows more details than I could submit in a few paragraphs, so as you can imagine throwing together some of the bigger aspects about my journey wasn't that difficult.

Fast forward about two months, I had almost forgot about the thing, and I get a phone call from someone with the campaign. They wanted to do a phone interview with me to hear more about what I wrote. I said sure, and a few days later had a 20-30 minute conversation with someone. I was then called back a few days later after that and told they wanted to have me come in for a casting session to potentially be part of their on-line commercial campaign! Once again, I figured, sure what the hell! That sounds both fun and interesting.

So last week Wed, the day of the nasty snow storm, I had a casting interview session that evening, at 3:30pm. I thought I was totally nervous, which I was, and that there was probably no way they would pick me. I can tend to ramble on and figured my incoherent thought processes wouldn't be what they would choose. But Friday night rolls around, and I get the phone call - they would like me to come in and shoot a commercial!

Now, to be clear, these are webisode type commercials. I have no illusions that I would end up on TV (but I'll keep everyone posted!). It is still cool to feel like... I don't know, maybe my experiences have something worth sharing, in a way that might help someone else. That's a good feeling, and yeah, maybe even a little ego stroking too.

Never in a million years when I started making changes in my life did I think it would culminate into something like this. I'm trying not to make it out to be more than it is, I mean, any yahoo with a digital camera can make a video to post on the internet (i.e. videos I post), but it's still cool to be singled out in this way.

The video shoot is Tuesday next week, with some kind of wardrobe session on Monday. Once things get posted up to the web site, I'll let everyone know so you can go read my story and see how my interview turns out. Here's hoping I don't end up too nervous.

Lucky SOB

2009-12-10T19:39:00.003-06:00

That's me. A week or so back I had planned on taking Wed off this week, for an ear appointment and to be home so Andrea could goto the dentist. Lo and behold, I get to stay home, using sick time, on the day of the horrible snow storm! I also was able to schedule an interesting interview later in the day... but more on that this weekend (teaser!).

Winter is offically here, and it offically sucks. I forgot how quickly traffic becomes an absolute nightmare. This morning I woke up late (6am) and wasn't on the road until 6:30am. It added a solid 10-15 minutes to my commute. Ugh! More motivation to get out and on the road even earlier these days...

The worst part about winter, is that when the commute becomes longer, something has to give time wise. That means less time running or worse, more "skip" days. After being in the car for a solid hour, the last thing I want to do is get on the treadmill for another hour.

Enough whining for now. In other news, Casey is growing up fast. She is trying so hard to crawl these days, just not quite sure how it works. Her upper two teeth are coming in already and she is trying lots of new baby foods all the time. Megan is still... Megan. Might be time to take the advice I've been given and read a few more parenting books.

Back to the Blog

2009-12-05T09:11:00.004-06:00

With Monday off work, this week went by pretty fast. For whatever reason, December always seems to be the "fastest" month of the year. Maybe it's Christmas, maybe it's time off work, who knows. All I know is I'm gonna blink and it's going to be 2010. Twenty Ten. It's weird when you stop to say it outloud. For the last 9 years, we've all been saying "Two thousand and...". But prior to that, we never said "One thousand nineteen hundred and...". Everything was "Nineteen Eighty." Or "Nineteen Ninety Five".

Now, we will enter a transition period. Some people will linger with the current way and say "Two Thousand and Ten". While others will go back to saying "Twenty Ten". Which will you be?

Of course the pending New Year has me thinking about my goals for 2010. I have some good ones, but so far they are all personal goals. I need to do what I did last year and start thinking about goals I want to make for other people. That doesn't quite come off right, because I'm not talking about making goals that I think other people should do. What I mean is, coming up with goals for myself that help other people.

In otherwords, coming up with the things I can do in the next year that help make me a better father, husband, son (& son in-law), brother (& brother in-law), and friend.

I do know that I have a lot of positive thoughts about the future right now, which is very unlike me. It's doubly weird considering all that we are going through right now and some of the family challenges we face on a day to day basis. I mean, it's a monumental task just to get Megan dressed these days. We have fights almost every night once I get home from work, usually revolving around her phyiscal side. Hitting, kicking, biting clothes. I won't even start about bed times and overnights.

Yet somehow, I know it is all going to pass. Megan will grow up, and yeah, it might take a year. Or even two, or hell, even three or more before she gets out of this phase. And during that time I might need to learn how to better deal with her outbursts. But we'll get through it together. I have faith.

Late Videos

2009-12-01T20:53:00.003-06:00

I promised 3 days in a row of videos, but the rest of the weekend just got away from me. Sunday we did an awesome amount of family stuff, Casey's first ever swimming trip to the YMCA, Vikings game, and dinner with the family. Made for a fun but long day, with no time for blogging. I even had Monday off work but still had other things going on.

Here is the last video in my video series of blog posts. It was from Saturday this weekend while Andrea and Megan were setting up the Christmas tree. I didn't realize the clip was so long (2:34) when I uploaded it. Hopefully it's not too long as to cause boredom!

Does that video seem familiar? Because it should. Almost exactly three years ago, we saw a similar event. Granted Megan was a little older than Casey is now...

Fall down go boom

2009-11-29T20:36:00.002-06:00

There is always a first time for everything right? I have logged quite a few miles on treadmills, but today I had a new first. I got flung off. It was my own fault, but damn was it funny. See, at the YMCA they have these over head flat screens right in front of the treadmills. I got sucked into watching an episode of "Monk" which I hardly ever watch. So I'm staring up and to the left and not noticing I'm slowly getting off center... I go to stop for a moment, only my feet don't land where I expect them to land (on the edges), BAM, next thing I know, I'm flung completely off the end of the treadmill.

Now, being as tall as I am, and 180+ pounds means the crash and landing sounded much worse then it was. People around thought I could have been seriously injured. I did scrape my leg up in one spot pretty good and got a nice rash burn on my arm but was otherwise fine. I kept running after my spill. The best part was when a few women behind me said, "Don't worry that's happened to me too."

Okay, on to the promised movies for today. These are from Thanksgiving day. This first one doesn't have anything special in it. Just a random 2 minute clip from my Thanksgiving day. Notice all the cheating going on in this game of "Cootie".

This next clip is of Megan playing the tuba. She has never been given specific directions on how to blow, to make your lips do that vibrating thing they need to do for brass instruments. She just sorta does it, and very well. I honestly don't think I could do that if I tried. Papa B says we should definitely consider wind instruments in her future.

Video & Picture Series

2009-11-28T15:18:00.004-06:00

I'm currently in the process of uploading another 500 megs worth of movies to youtube. Only a few minutes worth of clips, but dang do I love my new camera.

For that reason, I'm going to do a 3-day series of just movie clips and pictures from the last few days. Fun stuff from before, during, and after Thanksgiving. This year was a nice mellow Thanksgiving, and for the first time since I can remember, we only did one Thanksgiving destination this year. That made things even less stressful and also made it easier to not over eat!

To kick things off, here are a couple videos taken the night before Thanksgiving. I was just going to snap a few pictures when the camera was accidentally on video mode, so I just ran with it. Megan just loves performing for the camera, what can I say!

And more of Casey as well!

2 days to weekend

2009-11-23T20:07:00.004-06:00

Gotta love the short weeks. Today just dragged on after 2pm, because I didn't feel like starting anything ambitious that late in the day. The next two days will probably be more of the same, unless I start working on some side projects. You know, that one side project of mine to re-architect a 10 year old software product from the ground up. Hey, I might win the lottery too.

I had a ton of free time this weekend for various reasons, but I didn't get a chance to blog because I was too busying playing a new video game, Dragon Age: Origins. I'm a huge fan of Bioware games and this one is shaping up to be one of their best, if not THE best. It has one minor flaw in my opinion, and I already have a workaround via a user created mod. Gotta love the PC gamer community.

I got about 8 hours of gaming in over the 3 days of this past weekend, which is a lot for me. The progress tracking aspects of the game say I've explored about 10% of the world/game. That's decent if that is the case. I'm not rushing through it or anything, trying to explore everything/do all side quests. If that gives me 80 hours of gaming, I'd be very happy. I think Wolfenstein gave me a whole 15 hours, if that.

Thanksgiving is going to be a lot less stress this year, as we will only have one destination. Less travelling, less rushing around. Should make for a pleasant visit. And more importantly, I only have to worry about over eating once instead of twice! Yes!

Future Generation

2009-11-18T19:42:00.005-06:00

At least half the time I take Megan to McDonalds, I see something rather disturbing. Usually my follow up thought is "Man, I should post about that." Anything from worlds most angry parents to the absolute rudest teenage workers, swearing up a storm behind the counter, ignoring people waiting to order.

Usually I end up forgetting or not having the motivation by the time I get home. But tonight was disturbing enough to post. There was an elderly black man working the counter. Clearly he was new and had trouble taking orders. A young boy came up and said they forgot the honey with his order. The man didn't quite understanding him and didn't know where the honey was. Finally a younger white worker came over and showed him where it was. As I ordered, I did my best to patiently order and help the guy out. I even jokingly said, "I'll take 2 of those honeys also, now that you know where they are." He chuckled a little. I watched as the next person ordered in absolute disgust that the guy couldn't take her order in under 10 seconds. Getting verbally frustrated that she had to repeat herself twice that she wanted the MIGHTY kids meal, not the normal kids meal. (I didn't even know there was such a thing). I got sick to my stomach as I listened to the exchange get worse, and had to walk away.

Later, when I took Megan to the bathroom, the younger worker that was helping train the older new guy was talking with another worker. The exchange went something like this:

Guy 1: "Why do they have me training that guy?"
Guy 2: "Cause I'm not gonna do it."
Guy 1: "I'm not even black, why don't they get one of the black guys to do it."

Now, I'm not going to pretend McDonalds is a bastion of good morals, or that they hire the most quality people, but seriously wtf? I've seen some crappy things there but this one takes the cake. I felt like saying something, anything, about having a little more respect. I didn't because it obviously wouldn't matter. But is this attitude of the next generation? Is this the type of prejudice my kids will grow up around? Is today's youth full of smart ass kids who think they deserve whatever they want? Does asking these questions make me a crotchety old man?

I like to think I'm accepting of different types of people. I might not be 100% comfortable in every situation I could think of, but I can imagine at least trying. Is respecting people and being tolerant of differences something that is taught by parents? I don't recall my parents teaching me anything in particular about that topic. (sorry Mom!) So how did I come to this conclusion that basic respect of other humans is a standard way of living? Who knows... but I do know two things. One, I will never ever let my kids work at a fast food restaurant. (no offense Keara!) Two, I don't know if I want to just "hope" my kids end up with those basic qualities I deem essential to being a "good" person.

Church anyone?

Tuesday going on Friday

2009-11-10T18:02:00.004-06:00

Oddly enough, this time last year turned out to be almost exactly the same. Great weather all weekend in the first weekend of Nov, 2008 lead to 3 days and 24 miles. This weekend was no different. Only difference this year was 3 days and 30 miles.

Last night I took Megan to get an H1N1 shot. She was a champ, totally brave. For being so good about the whole thing, we grabbed a couple chocolate dipped cones from Dairy Queen afterwards. Today she said she wanted to be a Doctor when she grows up, like the lady that gave her the shot.

Casey is also doing well, finally over the whole series of colds that came through the house a few weeks ago. Seems to be sleeping well but I know Andrea is still longing for the days where she can sleep straight from 9pm to 7am. The funny part is how I've completely forgotten when that occurs. And if it wasn't for this blog, I'd probably never remember.

It looks like Megan had some long sleeps around the end of July 2006. That would put her at just under 2 years. And then we transitioned Megan to the bed when she was just over 2 years old. Despite the fact that time seems to be flying by lately, Casey being almost 2 years old seems very far off.

Tonight I'm alone with the girls and decided not drag them around to go watch V. Casey has been going to bed around 7pm a lot recently, so I figured I don't need to push it and make her stay awake until past 8pm. I suppose I should actually go, you know, do actual Fatherly type things instead of blog about it.

Gift from Above

2009-11-06T19:04:00.004-06:00

Not that I actually believe in that sort of thing... but today was certainly amazing. Considering we were within 5 degrees of the record high for this time of year. I left work at 3pm and immediately got outside for a nice 10 mile run. The even better news is I have another one planned for tomorrow afternoon. Awesome way to start out the weekend in my opinion.

Tuesday this week, we decided to put TV at the top of the priority list. We headed over to Grandma Gayle's to steal my TV for an hour and watch the first episode of the new V series. I remember the original so vividly from my youth, I was just drawn to watch the remake. The fact that I was only 7 or 8 years old when the original came out is even more interesting. It was a television mini series, so it couldn't have been THAT bad, but who can forget the famous gerbil eating scene? That's something that stuck with me all these years. Will they bring that scene back? Oh, I can only hope.

Wed night we got to babysit baby Elizabeth for a few hours. My Mom had bought some T-Wolves tickets for my brother and his wife a while back. Elizabeth is only 2 weeks old, so she is still just in that sleep/eat/poop mode. The babysitting was pretty easy, as she was mildly awake for an hour or so after being dropped off, but then slept the rest of the time.

Not much else going on this weekend. On Sunday, Andrea has plans to spend some time with her Mom and hopefully get a small break and some time to herself. I'll be home with the girls all day, but Grandma Gayle will be helping out, taking Megan swimming at the Y, etc.

Halloween Pics

2009-11-02T21:23:00.004-06:00

Good weekend, I'm too tired to post more. Spent the last 20 mins trying to come up with something fun/interesting/thought provoking to talk about, but I'm mentally spent. Everything in my life right now seems to have the volume turned up, and it's becoming hard to concentrate. So in the meantime, just some pictures up for Grandma Gayle.

Spoke too Soon

2009-10-28T23:01:00.004-05:00

I should be in bed. I have a bad cold and haven't been sleeping very well. Actually, last night I got a decent nights sleep because I went to bed with Megan in her bed at like 8pm. Andrea woke me up a little after 9pm and I just went back to bed right away.

I spoke too soon about the weather apparently. Tuesday night it was so sunny and semi-nice out, that despite the fact that I didn't pack for an outside run, I went for it anyway. It was a TAD cold in standard shorts and t-shirt, but after the first few miles it was great running weather. With some sunny days in the upper 40s yet to come... Who knows. After doing a full 2 hours on the treadmill last Sunday, I'm dying for more outside running.

Work is getting interesting. Interesting meaning, I can't hardly talk about it anymore, because it's gotten that bad. Thankfully, at this point, it's mostly just bitching and moaning, and not anything real. As far as the bottom line is concerned, the company as a whole seems to still be making money despite some serious attempts to fail at that. Not like what my Mom is going through, who just found out her entire COMPANY is being "sold off". And what is even worse, is my sister-in-law got a job there too, so that's two people in the "who knows if we will have a job tomorrow" camp. I'm gonna take a wild guess that is more stressful than what I'm dealing with.

It's times like these, where I start to think again about how nice it would be not to have to be a part of a system that puts no value in the individual. In other words, finding a way to work for myself and not for some abstract "company" that puts zero value in me. Sure, my manager might shower me in praise, and my co-workers might depend on me day to day. But when push comes to shove, none of that matters. Anyone I work with would stab me in the back to keep their jobs. Restructuring, lay-offs, down-sizing, whatever form it might come in. It's all just a stupid game, with everyone jocking for position to appear the most important so when that day comes, they aren't the one that's out of a job.

Maybe... just maybe, I need to start giving some serious long term thought to what it might take to become self-employed. After all, studies show that business owners have the highest overall Well-Being Index.

Quiet Evening

2009-10-24T20:15:00.003-05:00

Due to a series of events, I find myself with more free time this weekend than I have had in quite some time. My Mom earlier in the week volunteered to have Megan over night tonight, which worked for us. Tomorrow morning, Andrea is taking the girls down to New Ulm and I'll have the day to myself.

What will I do with all this new found free time! Not much really... relax in what little ways I can. Exercise, clean, and if there is a little time left over, play some video games.

Speaking of video games, I'm sorta not happy about my Dell purchase. The damn thing keeps locking up on me, 5 minutes into any game. And it's a hard lock, meaning I have to force reboot my computer. After the reboot, I can then play for whatever length of time and it seems to be fine. I've done some research and found that this particular product line of Dell (XPS 630i) is particularly plagued with hardware problems. Question is: do I feel like figuring it out myself, or do I deal with the Dell red tape and send it back under warranty, with the generic "It locks up on me occasionally, fix it and send it back."

As the continuing rain threatens to turn to snow any day now, I'm wondering if I might not get any more outdoor runs this year. Can you believe November is right around the corner? And Casey is already 5 months old tomorrow! Zang.

Right On Time

2009-10-21T21:45:00.004-05:00

We had marked down Valerie's due date as October 21st on our calendar. It was the day I originally remembered being told. And lo and behold, what do we find? Baby Elizabeth born on October 21st, in the early morning hours right before 4am. We stopped by the hospital tonight to get a peek at the newest Anderson on the block.

I'm so excited for my brother, and so nervous right along with him. I know what he is going through in some ways, and not at all in others. Our lives are on such different tracks, that it isn't always easy to relate. I do know he is going to be a great Dad even if he doesn't know it yet. It took me time to figure that out as well. And Scott, if you are reading this, I recommend going back to the start of our Adventure and reading up. Maybe you can find some words of wisdom in my ramblings from those first few weeks Megan entered our lives.

Congrats, I love you bro!

When things go as planned

2009-10-18T15:31:00.004-05:00

As I pulled into my standard break stop to down my first gu-gel and some water, the sign on the bank said 58 degrees. Perfect running weather! I'm still hoping for one more outdoor run, even if it ends up being in colder weather. But today was perfect and exactly what the doctor ordered. 17 miles where the last mile felt good instead of wishing I was done. There is absolutely no way I could run 17 miles on a treadmill. In fact, I don't even think it would be good for my legs / feet if I could.

The rest of this weekend was pretty low key. With my Mom out of town, and just coming off Megan's birthday last weekend, we didn't have much to do or in the way of visitors. Andrea and I took the opportunity to have a little "YMCA" date, where we dropped the kids off at Kid's Stuff and just spent some time in the pool/whirlpool/sauna. After that, we grabbed 2 Disney movies from Redbox and watched them over at my Mom's place.

This morning, before my run, I took Megan to the Zoo. It's our default activity when nothing else is going on and we just need to get out of the house. It turned out to be a great time and the weather was nice enough that Megan was able to enjoy the outside stuff (new playground and the bears). We also got to see something we had never seen before, they were training the new dolphins! It was pretty cool to see a dolphin know the difference between a blue triangle and a red star shape. And then we had a nice Zoo employee sitting next to us as we watched (there was only a handfull of people there). She was very engaging with Megan, telling her about what they were doing with the dolphins. And Megan kept asking various "Why?" questions and she just kept on answering them.

Megan got up close and personal before I realized we weren't supposed to.

Dolphin learning to pick out a specific shape/color.

Megan and the bears.

The leopard was out - very rare for early morning. This is only the second time Megan and I have seen this elusive guy. The last time we saw him was at 5pm right before zoo closing time.

Crazy Tongue Action

2009-10-15T20:52:00.004-05:00

Figured I might as well do a few days in a row with some pictures. Having lots of fun with the new camera. With an 8gig memory stick, I can take all sorts of pictures and video for a long time. I think at maximum quality, I can take over a full hour of video footage. That's awesome!

I'm hoping that I can get outside this weekend for a decent long run on Sunday. They are promising 60 and sunny. I would kill for that, hell I'd be happy with 50 and sunny. The whole treadmill thing is getting old fast and I've only done it for 2 weeks now. I've even tried hill programs and random settings to try and keep it interesting. That helps, but it is still just not the same. Honestly, I'm also starting to think that subtle differences in muscle usage occurs when on the mill. Enough such that I am sore in weird places that I've never felt when running outdoors.

I honestly can't believe October is already half over. Where does the time go? Within a week or two, my brother is gonna be a Dad for the first time. I can't believe that is happening already! Next thing you know, our kids will be crawling around and playing together. Expect lots of footage of that coming up here by the end of the month.

For Sarah, the picture that Megan took:

Megan's first snowman of this winter:

Casey doing funny faces:

This one is priceless:

Megan holding Casey:

And finally, more fun video footage:

Return of the Pic

2009-10-11T20:45:00.006-05:00

If you haven't noticed by now, it's been a huge dry spell in the picture / movie department on the ol' blog. Last time I posted a picture was back on August 9th, and those images were just horrible in quality. A combination of age and letting Megan play with my camera whenever she wanted lead to it finally breaking enough to warrant a new one.

So after much prodding, I had my brother give me a recommendation for a new one. Something reasonably priced, but still good quality. Since my brother has spent more on camera based products than I probably ever will in my life time, and has done way more research than me, I figured he would have good advice. It was basically an upgrade to my current Canon, the A1100 IS. Definitely more compact, just as easy to use, and very decent button press to picture taken response time. It's also kind of weird upgrading a camera from 512meg capacity to 8gb capacity. About the only thing I regret is that I wanted the new camera so bad, I just went and bought it from a physical store. Damn immediate gratification just cost me $20 bucks. Grrrrr...

The Sun Rules

2009-10-07T20:29:00.004-05:00

After all this rain, and 4 treadmill runs, today was an awesome change of pace. A breezy but comfortable temp for an outdoor run. Probably won't be too many left this year, sometime in October always spells the end for me. I just won't run in the snow, period. I can handle 40 degrees, but not snow.

I decided I will NOT be doing a $65 dollar half marathon race at the end of this month. The price tag is just too high for the quality of that run. Too much potential for it to be way too cold or wet or both. Last year, the only reason I did the run was because it was free (paid for by work). So technically speaking, I did not run any half marathon races this year. Only two 10k's, the 25k, and that silly 1 miler. The highlight for this year was my second 10k, which was a HUGE PR of 6:50 pace. I never dreamed I could run 6.2 miles straight at under 7 minute miles. Even saying it now sounds crazy.

So the end of the year running will just wind down with whatever outdoor runs I can manage and then it's the long harsh treadmill winter. I'll survive, but I think it's going to be the hardest winter yet, based on the level and types of running I got to this year. I have really come to look forward to my long weekend runs (13-16 miles, with a few 18-20). It's a solid 2+ hour block where it's just me and the road. A lot of tough things have sorted themselves out in those chunks of time, and trust me, you just can't run on a treadmill for 13+ miles. It's damn near impossible.

Translation? It would be great if I had no big stressors over the winter. Given a few of the big things that went on this year, that I have not, and cannot share on the blog, let's hope there aren't many more

Ground Zero

2009-10-01T20:00:00.002-05:00

Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
- Tyler Durden

Confession time. Work effects my mood. No matter how hard I try not to let it, or how many times I try to tell myself it doesn't matter, it does. Why? That's the more important question. I had to think long and hard about that, and I finally figured it out: My ego.

I remember well getting ready to leave my first job. I was convinced they'd be screwed without me. And when I told my close co-workers of my impending exit, they were down right frightenened because they depended on me so much. I had created an artifical sense of importance in order to feed my own ego. After I left, no earth shattering things occured. The machine kept on chugging as long as it could, with or without my help. Eventually all those people I worked with and that entire division was moved off-shore and they all lost there jobs.

So here we are today, and I've come to recognize the same thing. I have a self inflated sense of my own worth at "work". That things would just fall apart if I wasn't there. But they wouldn't. The machine will roll on, with or without my help. I might make minor contributions here and there, but by and large, the success of a company is way beyond what I do. If the current company I works for starts losing money, my contributions count for exactly dick. I'm just another line item in a budget. I've lived through lay-offs before, and to hell if I'm going to lose sleep over it.

The real lesson I should take away from my first job is this: I'm smart enough to see the end of the tracks. I knew Micron wasn't doing so well, and I could see the division I worked in was not doing so well. And although I survived a first round of lay-offs there, I was smart enough to see that sticking around longer was a gigantic waste of time, since no amount of contribution from ANYTHING would have changed the fact that the entire division was cut and everyone was out of a job.

So instead of letting work effect my mood, I'm simply going to do my best, ignore the rest, and remain unstressed. Nice little rhyme, eh? I'm so clever.

Just Another Monday

2009-09-28T21:03:00.004-05:00

I was able to enjoy what was most likely the last good weather this past weekend. I did a quick 6 miler on Saturday evening and a 14 miler on Sunday late morning. The Sunday run was windy as hell and drizzled a little bit, but nothing too bad.

It's crazy to think there are only 3 months left in this year, with Casey already hitting the 4 month mark. Maybe it felt different with Megan because she was born in October and we had the long winter together. Or maybe I've just been too busy with work, running, or Megan. Whatever it might be, it feels like Casey is growing up dang fast. In Megan related news, she is totally excited to turn 4. For various reasons, she has it in her head that once she turns 4, she can go outside all by herself. She is always talking about things she will be able to do when she is bigger. It's fun to hear her get so excited for the future.

I've been thinking a lot lately about that very topic. The future. About goals and aspirations. About home life, personal life, family life, work life. The pieces of the puzzle are constantly in flux, and just when I start to solidify a picture, something will come along to jumble it all up again. But one question has been rising to the top of "Shawn's bag of questions" more often recently. What kind of Father do I want to be?

So far, I've been surviving on the default approach. Love, caring, and support. They are pretty safe bets, and if you do nothing else, you're probably doing okay if you stick to those basic needs. And when you're almost 4 year old looks up and you and tells you for the first time, "You are the best Daddy ever." you have to assume you are doing SOMETHING right.

But love, caring, and support only go so far. Kids need teachers. They also need limits and boundaries. Things I absolutely suck at. Megan's asleep on the couch next to me, because it's easier than dealing with forcing her back in her room. Is it not that big of a deal, or will it come back to haunt me when she is 13 and trying to walk all over me?

Regularly Scheduled

2009-09-24T21:15:00.002-05:00

Been a pretty good week. Nothing spectacular, but nothing overly stressful either. Probably the most stressful thing right now is that Casey has a bad cold which Megan also just got. This has made for some rough sleeping nights and grumpy day time. I'm just waiting for it to turn into ear infections...

Although I haven't been worried about work much this week, I have been thinking about it. Thinking about my place in the machine and all that. I have grandiose ideas, but I've come to terms with the fact that I'll never do anything with them. For various reasons, not the least of which is, I'm more or less convinced I wouldn't get the recognition (and compensation) I would deserve. But earlier this week, I had a crazy work dream. I dreamt I was in a meeting that was so pointless, I just had to say "This is stupid" and walk out of the meeting. That exact meeting, with all the players from the dream, took place today. Weird huh? Only difference is I didn't walk out, I suffered through it.

I'm still not looking forward to being forced indoors, so I'm going to try and enjoy as many runs these last few weeks as I can handle. Last night I wussed out due to being tired (I went to bed at 8:30pm I was so tired!!). But I've been pushing out some hard miles. I'd say there's a greater than 50% chance I'm going to do the half marathon race on Halloween.

End of Summer

2009-09-21T20:06:00.004-05:00

With the crappy race and my general mood of last week, I didn't have much hopes for the weekend. In fact, Friday night I went for a "run" that could hardly qualify as such. I was just so mentally beat that I even stopped to walk a few times, and only managed few miles. Ugh, bleh, and general blah.

Saturday rolls around and we do some basic stuff. Megan at dance class followed up by a quick (and hot) afternoon birthday party with visit to grandmas as well. We were sorta all over. But Saturday evening I was able to sneak away and spend some time with a good friend and catch a movie.

That evening with my friend basically flipped my entire weekend around, for a few reasons. You see, my friend is going through some incredibly tough shit. Stuff that, in my humble opinion, would just destroy someone. And in a way, that's exactly what happened. I had been getting glimpses of what was going on over the last year, but it wasn't until this weekend that I got the whole picture.

Part of me was just so completely saddened to hear all the ways that life was essentially kicking his ass. And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, life found ways to kick him while he was down. Another part of me was disappointed in myself as a friend. Shouldn't I have seen this? Wouldn't a better friend have made time to realize what was going on? Is this another side effect of being too wrapped up in my own life?

One last part of me also started to realize how good life HAS been to me, and how quickly it can all change. Maybe I'm just insanely lucky. Maybe my "plan for the worst" approach has some merit. I might be overly pessimistic, but in this day, can you afford not to be?

Sunday morning I took all that jumble of stuff and ran it out. No more complaining, no more whining, no more blahs. If life is going to continue to beat up on my family, my friends, and everyone I love and care about, then the last thing I'm going to do is let it beat up on me too. If you dig deep, and push hard enough, sometimes you can surprise yourself and find just a little more.

Dark Moods

2009-09-17T20:56:00.003-05:00

With October right around the corner, my self diagnosed minor case of Seasonal Affective Disorder seems to be kicking in. Funny thing is, it hit me in April too, I just had too much stuff going on to realize it at the time. I like to think that it has a lot to do with being trapped inside for a few months with no running, but who knows. Maybe I'm just not getting enough sleep.

I was watching Megan and our neighbors kids jumping on the trampoline tonight, and my neighbor comes over and asks, "Is everything okay?". I assumed he was referring to the kids, and of course, everything was fine. But perhaps he just happened to notice me in one of my brooding states (and if he reads this, maybe he'll let me know which it was ☺).

We also had another conversation, which for various reasons, included him asking me what I thought the purpose of life was. At first I was taken a little off guard. It's not too often someone goes there. In fact, I honestly can't recall the last time someone just straight up asked me that. I tried to articulate an answer, but that's tough to do in 60 seconds, and his youngest was crying for Daddy to come inside. Fast food philosophy, deep thoughts in a minute or less or you're next question is free! Oh the challenges of parenting.

It did get me thinking though, about how much I missed discussing/thinking about deeper things, and how nice it would be to just have long talks about those things in life that you don't talk about much. Am I alone in my peers, not having a defined purpose? Am I weird for thinking the "search for purpose" is something that should never stop until the day you die? Do all 30 somethings around me have it all figured out, with a clearly defined since of purpose, that somehow I passed up because of my life choices and life views?

I was also reminded that at one point, I had high hopes that my blog would be an outlet for deep thought. I've attempted to from time to time, but it always either comes out wrong, negative, or as rants. There has got to be a middle ground where I can still "vent" about things that piss me off, but also share other things I think about from time to time. Maybe I'll work on that for October...

Monday Already?

2009-09-13T20:28:00.003-05:00

After a few 3 day weekends, the whole 2 day weekend just doesn't seem like enough. I wanna say there was something blog worthy last week, but time just snuck away from me. Of course, the new computer doesn't help matters. Squeezing in the time for video games has got to take time from something. I bought a new game on Friday - I've installed it, but not even started it once yet.

On the work front, I'm predicting that the next 4-5 months will be "interesting". And when I say "interesting" I mean, even if a bunch of things that are currently in motion go "well", there is still a large chance of fail. The thing that will be interesting, is to see how that fail plays itself out. Who will point fingers? Where will the blame fall? Will there be a shake-up or will we just move on?

As for running, I just had my last race of the year today. The long cold winter and loss of motivation is going to set in soon enough, but I should be able to get in at least a few more weeks of outdoor running. Last year, my last race ended on a high note. This year ended on a flop.

I set out with a goal pace of under 7:30, and I achieved that. Offical time has me at 7:27 pace, my watch was 7:22 pace. But overall, it was just a bad race. There were a few possbile contributing factors. I maybe didn't eat/fuel correctly yesterday. Maybe the humidity/heat got to me in the later half of the race. Perhaps I started too fast for a 25k race. Whatever it was, although I achieved my goal, mentally I did not. My per-mile pace tells the story:

I essentially ran two races. The first half of the race where I was feeling good, going strong with a 7 minute pace. I wasn't worried about keeping up the 7 minute pace the entire time, I figured maybe midway I'd slow it down to 7:15s (which I did). However, shortly after mile 9, things just fell apart. I just had no energy, I had nothing to dig into, and I wanted to quit more than any race I've ever done. Mentally I had basically given up. Every time someone passed me, instead of trying to keep pace, I just fell farther behind. It took every ounce of will power just to maintain sub 8s.

I'm honestly not sure I can end this year with this race. I might have to cough up some dough and end on the same race I ended with last year: the Monster Dash Half Marathon . $65 dollars is a lot to pay just for my bruised ego.

Labor... dang

2009-09-08T19:16:00.004-05:00

Over already... that was fast. The weekend was weird, but good. Saturday Andrea and the girls went to visit her parents. I stayed home simply because my new computer was slated to arrive on Saturday and someone had to be here to sign for it. I spent all day doing house work (laundry, dishes, grocery shopping) and getting the computer desks ready. This mainly consisted of finding a place for a 19" inch CRT monitor and buying some new screws to reattach a busted keyboard tray that Megan broke off a few months ago.

The computer finally arrived at 4:45pm, and I immediately got a 7.5 mile run in. Got back home at 6pm, showered and started setting things up. I got about 30-45 minutes of "What is this Windows Vista crap?" before everyone got home. Didn't have much time to get anything set up.

Sunday I squeezed in a little more time and got the one game I bought setup - Mass Effect. It's a kick ass game and I'm going to have fun playing through it multiple times (at least twice for sure) in preperation for Mass Effect 2, due out Q1 2010.

Monday I shifted gears and made sure I kept running a priority with a solid 18 mile run. The funny part was that I was passed while running by my friend Steve on his bike. Although we follow each other on our blogs, it was nice to catch up in person. He stayed with me for a few miles, prompting me to run a little harder so he didn't have to go so slow on his bike. Can you tell what part of the run he was with me? :-)

Grandma Gayle took Megan swimming Monday morning and was gracious enough to extend her time with Megan into the afternoon. This gave me a little more time to play on the new computer and I got a few misc applications setup, more system tweaks and learning how crazy Windows Vista is. I'm not gonna bother learning much more about Vista, since I'll be getting the free Windows 7 upgrade when it is released, which I think is as early as late October?

Sorry for the rambling, somewhat tech related post. Just not much else to update on!